Hank the cat claws in at 3rd pace in Virginia Senate Race with nearly 7,000 votes

The owners, er, campaign managers, of a Maine coon in Northern Virginia who waged a write-in campaign for U.S. Senate this year, are claiming a third-place finish of nearly 7,000 votes. Hank the Cat, the independent, tie-wearing furball from Springfield, netted far fewer votes than Democratic Senator-elect Tim Kaine and Republican former Sen. George Allen, but apparently collected an overwhelming majority of the write-in votes counted so far.

Anthony Roberts, who calls himself Hank's equivalent of Karl Rove (pre-Fox News meltdown), says he and Hank's other owner, Matthew O'Leary, are contacting precincts across the commonwealth to find out just how many Virginians were willing to stake their upper-chamber representation on a feline. The Virgina Board of Elections does not report individual write-in votes, but as of this writing, it had counted 7,319 write-ins out of nearly 3.7 million votes cast in the Senate race.

"Regardless of the votes, we still raised $60,000 for animal rescue," Roberts says. "There are literally going to be lives that are saved with that. From our personal point of view we got to share our kitty with the entire world, and that's really great."

Among the groups that Hank for Senate will be turning its campaign receipts over to are Four Paws, Animal Allies, the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, and a Russian animal welfare organization selected by Svetlana Petrova, a St. Petersburg-based artist who designed a series of mock two-dollar bills featuring Hank's catty visage.

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