Renewed Statehood Campaign

Statehood exhibit at Southern Christian Leadership Conference

The sudden demise of the six-year campaign for the DC House Voting Rights Act reminded self-determination advocates that an incremental step can lead to a dead end, and statehood advocates again pressed DC’s Delegate to introduce statehood legislation. Norton announced that at the beginning of the next Congressional session (112th), she would introduce three “voting rights bills,” one of which would be statehood legislation.

In 2011, a renewed campaign for DC statehood gained momentum. For the first time in 15 years, there was the essential element of Congressional statehood legislation after Norton again introduced the New Columbia Admission Act in the House. Also essential was the grassroots coalition of statehood advocates eager to recruit cosponsors for the legislation and build support for statehood.

As they organized to recruit cosponsors for the New Columbia Admission Act, statehood advocates decided to begin their efforts with a focus on current members of Congress who had cosponsored DC statehood bills in the eighties and nineties, members of the Black and Progressive Caucuses, and the chairs of the Asian Pacific American and Hispanic Caucuses. Former cosponsors of DC statehood legislation and members of the Black Caucus enthusiastically agreed to be cosponsors. Particularly encouraging were staff in the offices of John Lewis and John Conyers, as well as Congressman Conyers himself. By the end of the 112th Congress, the New Columbia Admission Act had 28 cosponsors.¹

April 16, 2012, was the first DC Emancipation Day that advocates lobbied on the Hill for DC statehood. Because of their success in scheduling meetings and recruiting cosponsors, lobbying for DC Statehood on Emancipation Day became an annual statehood tradition that continued until the coronavirus closed the Capitol in 2020.

Statehood advocates welcomed the need to expand their campaign in 2013, at the beginning of the 113th Congress, when Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE) introduced the New Columba Admission Act in the Senate. His co-introducers were three senior Democratic Senators--Richard Durbin (IL), Patty Murray (WA), and Barbara Boxer (CA).²

¹ https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/265.

² https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/132/text.