D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), and Delaware’s U.S. Sen. Tom Carper held a news conference on March 1 to announce that a bill granting the residential and commercial areas of the District of Columbia statehood was introduced and based on a plan used by Tennessee.
The flag of the District of Columbia that promotes statehood. (Courtesy Image)
At the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, the lawmakers and the elected District of Columbia statehood delegation, said the bill would make the District the 51st state of the union. Norton, serving in the U.S. Congress since 1991, said she won’t give up the fight for full citizenship of her constituents.
“Sen. Carper and our city leaders come united for a dual-purpose D.C. statehood event – the delivery of a petition to Congress for statehood by Bowser and Mendelson and the introduction of our statehood bill, the Washington, D.C. Admissions Act, in the House and Senate by me and Sen. Carper,” the delegate said. “The statehood referendum asked voters ‘whether the council should petition Congress to enact a statehood admission act. D.C. voters made their choice loud and clear with 85 percent support.”
The District is pursuing statehood through the Tennessee Plan, in which a jurisdictional referendum was voted on, a constitutional convention took place, the city’s legislative body, the D.C. Council, approved the statehood plan and then the leaders approach Congress. Tennessee became a state in 1796 through this method and six other states – Michigan, Iowa, California, Oregon, Kansas and Alaska –gained statehood, also.
This is the first time the District has used the Tennessee Plan for statehood. On Nov. 21, 1993 Norton led an effort to pass the “District of Columbia Statehood Act” but it failed, 277-153.
Other statehood-like initiatives such as the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment in 1978 and the 2009 District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act weren’t enacted by Congress either.
Nevertheless, Norton said the District statehood effort is making headway. “Today 60 percent of House Democrats are introducing our statehood bill alongside me, joining me not only as co-sponsors, but as equal original cosponsors,” she said. “This 60 percent in just the first two months of the 115th Congress smashes the record we set last Congress when 50 percent of Democrats were original cosponsors. By the 114th Congress was over, 72 percent of House Democrats were cosponsors of my bill, with only logistics and timing accounting for why there were not more. By the end of this Congress, our goal is to beat the total number of cosponsors we got last Congress. We hope that residents will similarly set goals for themselves – for example, gathering increased support for statehood in the city and the country.”
In the past, Norton embraced the concept of incrementalism or the means that statehood would come in phases, but the delegate rejects the approach now. “To be content with less than statehood is to concede the equality of citizenship that is the birthright of our residents as citizens of the United States,” the delegate said. “That is a concession no American citizen has ever made and D.C. residents will never make as we approach the 216th year in their fight for equal treatment in their country.”
Bowser said “District residents aren’t demanding special treatment but equal treatment from the country that we love” and Mendelson pointed out that city residents are the “only citizens on Earth that cannot participate in their national legislature.”
Carper, who held the first D.C. statehood hearing in 20 years, in 2014, said that “people in D.C. deserve statehood because they pay taxes and serve in the military.”
Norton conceded that she and Carper’s bills have little chance for passage because the Republican majorities in both chambers think only a Constitutional amendment can grant statehood or that the District, except for the federal enclave, should retrocede into Maryland. Norton has rejected both ideas and said that Maryland elected officials aren’t interested in having the District as a part of their state.
While support for statehood is strong among residents, the methods used by Norton and Bowser have been questioned by some. “The constitutional convention that the city had last year had a lot of problems,” Ann Hume Loikow, a statehood activist for decades, told the AFRO. “We need to have a real constitutional convention where some of the problems dealing with D.C. being a state are thought through . . . The people voted for statehood and the District government needs to devote the resources to see how this will work.”