Dems push to make D.C. the 51st state

For Holmes Norton, another clarifying moment had come in 2009, when Democrats were prepared to pass the D.C. Voting Rights Bill, which would have given D.C. a vote in the House. Then the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied to include a provision that would have overturned the city’s gun-control laws. “That was very heartbreaking,” Holmes Norton told me. “Since then, we’ve just gone for full-fledged statehood.”

Most Republicans, predictably, are less open to the idea. When, in 2016, the Washington Post’s editorial board asked the Presidential candidate John Kasich why he was opposed to giving D.C. voting representatives, he said, “What it really gets down to, if you want to be honest, is because they know that’s just more votes in the Democratic Party.” He was indisputably right—Hillary Clinton went on to win more than ninety per cent of D.C.’s vote in 2016. And, though H.R. 51 will likely pass in the House, Republicans will not take it up in the Senate. Even a Democratic President with a Democratic House and a simple Senate majority in 2021 would likely have to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass such a bill.

Republican opposition aside, though, Holmes Norton and statehood advocates are beginning this latest push under favorable conditions. On Friday, the House passed H.R. 1, a large package of pro-democracy reforms—including public campaign financing and automatic voter registration—advanced by Democrats. The bill also contained a nonbinding endorsement of statehood for Washington, D.C. This made H.R. 1’s passage the first time that a house of Congress has backed statehood for the district. Both H.R. 1 and H.R. 51 have arrived at a moment when disenfranchisement, particularly for African-Americans—who make up forty-seven per cent of D.C.’s population—has become a galvanizing issue for Democrats. In House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement backing H.R. 51, she drew a connection between that bill and the Party’s effort to protect minority voters at the polls. “Democrats will restore every American’s right to be heard at the ballot box,” she wrote. “Whether they are citizens of our nation’s capital or live in historically marginalized communities across the country, Democrats are working to pass bold, ambitious legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, finally grant full voting rights and statehood to the District of Columbia and bring back integrity to Washington to ensure our government works for everyone.”