Enthusiasm for Voting Rights and Statehood

Statehood advocates take their message to the mall

In 2003, the announcement by Republican Congressman Tom Davis from Northern Virginia of his support for a full-fledged House member to represent DC brought renewed hope to voting rights advocates. DC Vote, led at the time by Ilir Zherka as executive director, saw an opportunity to get a foothold in Congress for DC residents.

DC Vote worked with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the League of Women Voters, and other civil rights organizations to form a national voting rights coalition that grew to 100 members, providing remarkable national support for expanding the rights of DC residents. After a key meeting with Delegate Norton encouraged the Voting Rights Coalition to continue working on voting rights legislation, DC Vote and the Coalition were able to gain the support of Mayor Williams and the DC Council.

The next year, after conferring with voting rights advocates, legal scholars and others, Davis introduced legislation that called for adding two seats to the House: one for the overwhelmingly Democratic District and another for the next state in line to pick up a representative, Republican-leaning Utah.

After several years of organizing and lobbying, the legislation, renamed the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act (DC HVRA), gained momentum and was reintroduced in 2007 by Norton, Davis, and a bipartisan group of eight additional cosponsors. This legislation had the support of prominent Republicans, including Orrin Hatch, Utah’s senior senator, and John Huntsman, Governor of Utah. In April of that year, on DC Emancipation Day, Mayor Adrian Fenty led a march, organized by DC Vote and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, from the District Building to the Capitol in support of the bill. Three days later, the legislation was passed by the House. After several months of intense lobbying, a majority of Senators supported the DC HVRA, but its progress was halted in the Senate by a filibuster.¹

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 filled DC self-determination advocates with optimism. Knowing that it was possible for the United States to elect such an inspiring African American leader as Barack Obama encouraged advocates to see new possibilities in their hopes and dreams for statehood and voting rights. Statehood advocates felt that people outside of DC who had the wisdom to vote for Barack Obama would understand that DC residents should have all the rights that people in the 50 states enjoy.

It wasn’t only optimism that gave new energy to statehood advocacy. In the seventies when statehood and Congressional voting rights were competing self-determination strategies, statehood advocates argued that statehood would not only bring representation in Congress, but also prevent Congressional interference, which in the seventies, was not a major concern for most Washingtonians. But by 2008, the city had endured over a decade of oppressive Congressional interference, and for many self-determination advocates, ending Congressional interference had become as important as gaining Congressional representation.

“Yes We Can! DC STATEHOOD NOW!” proclaimed hundreds of red and white placards along Pennsylvania Avenue and other major DC streets in the days leading up to Barack Obama’s inauguration. The placards were the work of shadow senator Michael D. Brown, who arranged for their production and statehood advocates who put them up. Early in 2009, DC Council Chair, Vincent Gray, established a special Council Committee on Statehood and Self-Determination, and statehood advocates urged Delegate Norton to introduce statehood legislation.

Delegate Norton, Mayor Fenty, and the DC Council were focused on the DC House Voting Rights Act. They were committed to the incremental approach to DC self-determination, and they saw the DC HVRA as the next step. They were confident of its success, because the 2008 election had also given the Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate.²

Voting rights advocates were thrilled when the Senate scheduled a vote on the DC HVRA for the end of February. During the “debate” preceding the vote, Senators had little to say about the need for DC residents to have a vote in Congress. One of the first to speak was John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, who proposed an amendment that would have repealed all of DC’s current gun laws and prevented the city from any future gun regulation. The DC House Voting Rights Act passed with the amendment attached. For over a year, Delegate Norton tried to find a way to decouple the Ensign Amendment from the DC HVRA. But the National Rifle Association (NRA) was adamant about keeping the amendment on the bill.

By the spring of 2010, time was running out on a House vote for the DC Voting Rights Act. The bipartisan pairing of Democratic DC and Republican Utah would no longer work if Utah, as expected, gained an additional seat as a result of the 2010 census. “I believed we could get our gun laws back, but we could never get Utah back,” explained Norton. “It really was a now or never proposition.” The message she and Ilir Zherka of DC Vote thought they were hearing from the city government, DC residents, and a coalition of voting rights advocates, was: “‘Don’t lose the only chance we have.’” In April, Norton told the House leadership to schedule a vote on the DC Voting Rights Act with the attached gun amendment.

As soon as the time for the vote was announced, fierce opposition emerged, The DC Council passed a resolution against the legislation and urged Norton to abandon it. A Washington Post editorial denounced it, and DC Vote’s long-time Voting Rights Coalition partners, including the League of Women Voters, came out against the bill. At the last minute, Norton decided that the amendment was not something the District could accept, and she asked Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to “pull the bill.”³

¹ Ilir Zherka, former executive director of DC Vote, phone interview with /Elinor Hart, April 1, 2020; “Right Goal, Right Means,” Washington Post, Dec 12, 2004; “Today’s Voting Rights Push,” Washington Post, Apr 16, 2007; “House Approves a Full Seat,” Washington Post, Apr 20, 2007; D.C. Vote Advocates Jack Up Pressure, “Washington Post, June 27, 2007.

² “Backers of Voting Rights Split,” Washington Post, Nov 10, 2008.

³ “How the Gun Lobby Shot Down D.C.’s Congressional Vote,” City Paper, June 4, 2010; “For D.C. Voting Rights, Window Appears Closed,” Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2010.