Not really: Jainists are about the most whole-hog AR folks out there, and you can hardly call them rich. Many Buddhists follow a philosophy with similarities to AR, and outside of California, Buddhism isn’t the exclusive playground of rich eccentrics.
What a lot of people don’t seem to get is that, whereas non-AR people put a division between animals and people such that human rights are almost dependent on a lack of animal rights, AR folks don’t have such a division. They believe that rights are independent of species, and that (to grossly oversimplify) rights are accrued by beings who are substantially capable of enjoying those rights. (I might therefore argue that a child has a right to an elementary-school education, but it’d be absurd to argue that a Yorkshire terrier has the same right; however, I could argue that both of them have a right not to be beaten).
Interestingly, The Case for Animal Rights, the movement’s major philosophical work, spends most of its time arguing for human rights (as opposed to, for example, utilitarianism or rational egoism). It’s only the first couple of chapters (which argue that most adult mammals are capable of feeling pain, of forming beliefs and desires, and of having a personality that exists through time) and the last couple of chapters (which argue that a philosophy that grants rights must do it independent of species or other arbitrary distinctions) that focus on animals and not people.
For a rather biased overview of the debate over animal rights, you could always check out [url=http://courses.ats.rochester.edu/nobis/papers/Cohen_and_Regan_review.html]this Web site*. It’s not super-persuasive, and I’m guessing it was written by a freshman at Rochester, but it does present some of the basic arguments on each side. I don’t know of an online article that’s better written that presents the same arguments. I’ll keep looking
Daniel