Animal Wellness Action Calls Out Adair County Candidate Endorsed by the Oklahoma Cockfighters Front Group

Tulsa, PK  — Animal Wellness Action today urged voters in Oklahoma House District 86 (Adair, Cherokee, and Delaware Counties) to reject David Hardin in his quest for reelection because of his full-throated support of cockfighting and a front group for cockfighting known as the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission. Animal Wellness Action urges voters in House District 86 to vote for “anyone but David Hardin in the November 5^th election.”

The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission is a cockfighters’ political action committee, and Hardin has expressed sympathy for their mission to decriminalize cockfighting in Oklahoma.

In November 2023, State Representative David Hardin attended the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission’s annual legislative meeting in McAlester, where cockfighting t-shirts and paraphernalia were on open display and several speakers, including Hardin, openly endorsed cockfighting. Hardin told the audience of cockfighting enthusiasts that he “had been to more chicken fights than I can even count.” Cockfighting is a felony in Oklahoma as well as by federal law.

Animal Wellness Action has reviewed this information and confirmed concerns about Representative Hardin’s support of the cockfighter group’s agenda, deeming it “highly concerning.”

In the 2024 run-off primary for Senate District 33 in Broken Arrow, Animal Wellness Action helped to defeat pro-cockfighting Republican Senate candidate Shelley Gwartney and put anti-cockfighting candidate Christi Gillespie on her way to the State Senate.

“Based on my involvement in working to dismantle animal fighting operations over 40 years, I believe the barbaric practice of cockfighting has no place in Oklahoma,” said Kevin Chambers, Oklahoma state director for Animal Wellness Action, a national organization that promotes legal standards against cruelty and specializes in combating animal fighting. “Support for cockfighting and the supplying of fighting roosters for cockfighting — perhaps one of the most reprehensible forms of animal cruelty — is disqualifying for public office.”

Chambers, formerly of Stilwell, was at the meeting in McAlester and heard Hardin’s statements firsthand.

Animal Wellness Action has previously discovered that cockfighters maintain an extensive network of underground cockfighting operations in Oklahoma. In February 2024, Animal Wellness Action investigators were at a cockfight in Adair County and tried unsuccessfully to get the Adair County sheriff’s office to take action to stop the fights.

Congress is now considering the FIGHT Act, H.R. 2742 and S. 1529, to crack down on dogfighting and cockfighting in a more determined way. With more bipartisan support than any other animal welfare bill in this Congress, the FIGHT Act has nearly 700 endorsing agencies and organizations, including the National Sheriffs’ Association, which links animal fighting to “crimes against people including, but not limited to, child abuse, murder, assault, theft, intimidation of neighbors and witnesses, and human trafficking” and ties it to “intricate criminal networks and connections to organized crime, trafficking narcotics, illegal firearms, and attempted bribery of elected officials.”