Dealing With The Elephant In The Room

Every fall and spring, when America’s top circus company returns to the home state of founder P.T. Barnum, there are animal rights activists lying in wait.

No doubt this will be true next week when “The Greatest Show on Earth” comes to Hartford.
Regular circus-goers may be used to seeing protestors by now, although some protestors cross the line, as evidenced recently when eight agreed to fines for interrupting a show in Barnum’s hometown of Bridgeport last fall.

But the real threat to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus isn’t the picketers outside the tent, it’s the suits inside the state Capitol. Animal rights supporters, particularly those from People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA), may be known for shocking, attention-grabbing stunts, but the group’s lobbying work is crafty: It doesn’t push banning the circus outright — since one might as well try banning picnics or birthday parties — but instead continually offers up legislative proposals that would make the circus business financially untenable by removing its top selling point: elephants.

There are a bevy of examples from the last dozen years. A 1995 bill would have prevented elephants from being chained for more than two hours in any 24-hour period, making their participation on tour impossible. Another would have required that elephants be kept in a space only slightly larger than a typical railroad car –- the circus’s method of transport. A bill from last year would have created an “elephant inspection account” and $1,000 fee for animal cruelty.

The decade-plus long campaign appears to be grinding on the opposition.

“They’re like a little C.I.A. They have intelligence,” Carroll J. Hughes of Middletown’s Hughes & Cronin Public Affairs Strategies, said of PETA.

Harder Fight

Hughes has successfully fended off the save-the-elephants proposals for Feld Entertainment, parent of Ringing Bros., since 2005. But the fight isn’t getting any easier.

This year’s attempt to hinder the circus, he said, is “absolutely” the most serious. PETA and other animal rights supporters have proposed banning use of an ankus (often called a bullhook), a heavy baton with a metal hook on the end, to handle elephants. The device hurts elephants in PETA’s view, while Hughes says a properly used ankus is harmless and that banning it would make using elephants in Connecticut performances impossible. And without elephants –- its “core product” –- Hughes doubts the circus business can be profitable.

“The elephants are the number one card for drawing people to the circus. It’s the symbol of Ringling Bros.,” he said, noting the company’s logo.

“There is so much competition for entertainment. The thing that keeps it attractive and competitive is the elephants,” he added.

The two sides have entered into a sort of lobbying arms race. At a public hearing, animal rights supporters supplied a three-minute DVD with graphic images of elephant abuse to Environment Commmittee members and then trotted in a former Ringling Bros. employee, who detailed a gruesome 45-minute elephant beating that took place while she worked for the company.

Hughes has in turn talked about his client’s $5 million animal refuge in Central Florida and invited legislators for a behind-the-scenes viewing of the animals in the show and their treatment on May 10, the second day of the company’s stop in Hartford.

He also isn’t afraid to take shots at the competition. “Some of these people are fanatical terrorists,” he said.

Last week, the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee endorsed the measure to curtail the use of bullhooks to keep elephants in line.

What Hughes has yet to harness is the voice of the circus’s top customers, children and families, who he says are at-risk of being denied the opportunity to see the circus and see elephants up close. While local animal rights supporters –- including some of the same who were arrested last fall –- have come to the Capitol to lend their support, testimony for Ringling Bros. lacked real, live circus lovers, unless one counts someone from the “Outdoor Amusement Business Association” and the director of the “National Circus Fans Association of America.”

No doubt the crowds will come to the shows to vote with their pocket books, but will they also get on the phone to their local representative?

If not, when the “The Greatest Show on Earth” rolls into town next week, the Civic Center will be filled with Asian tigers and motorcycling clowns, but Hughes will be the one doing the acrobat work.

Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.