Posted on 07/01/2020 4:03:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
The drive to make Washington, D.C., a state has been a favorite of some Democrats for years. Why wouldn't it be? If enacted, a new state, formed from deepest-blue D.C., would create two new Democratic senators and one new Democratic member of the House. For a Democrat, what's not to like?
But while there have been lots of D.C. statehood bills over the years, the issue has been voted on only once before. In 1993, it failed badly in the House, losing 277 to 153. Back then, moderate Democrats put their judgment before partisan interest, splitting on whether statehood was really necessary. Democratic stalwart Rep. John Dingell, for example, opposed it, saying if residents of the District of Columbia didn't like where they lived, they could "leave any time they want."
But times have changed. Pro-statehood leaders have portrayed statehood as a civil rights issue. That's not new, but it is particularly resonant for Democrats with Black Lives Matter protests going on around the country. So recently, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put statehood to its second-ever vote, the measure passed with almost every Democrat voting for it. (The lone exception was Minnesota moderate Rep. Colin Peterson.) Every Republican voted against it. That's where things stand until the Republican-controlled Senate stops it cold.
"This is not just an issue of local governance and fairness," House No. 2 Democrat Steny Hoyer said. "It is a major civil rights issue as well." The name of the proposed new state would be the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, for the former slave and famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Some supporters' rhetoric got far more heated. "Residents in our nation's capital cannot be who we dream to be because Republicans in Congress won't get their knees off our necks," wrote longtime Washington Post columnist Colbert King.
If passed, D.C. statehood would be a complicated affair. The Constitution specifically calls for a seat of national government that is not part of any state and that is under the complete jurisdiction of Congress. Its residents have the right to vote for president -- that was granted in the 1960s -- but not for a voting representative in either the House or the Senate.
The original 100-miles-square District of Columbia was taken from Maryland and Virginia and straddled the Potomac River. Many Virginians were not happy about it. In 1846, Congress returned the part south and west of the Potomac to Virginia. That was known as "retrocession."
Now, some suggest that if residents of the district want full voting representation, they should do the same thing with Maryland -- that is, shrink the current District of Columbia down to the bare-bones federal areas and return the rest to Maryland. That way, residents of the largest part of D.C. would become residents of Maryland and have full voting rights and representation. The much smaller remaining District of Columbia would cover mostly the White House, the Mall, federal buildings and the Capitol.
It would be complicated, but it has been done before with Virginia. But D.C. statehood advocates don't want it. Why? Because retrocession to Maryland would not create a new state with two new Democratic senators and one new Democratic representative.
If Democratic statehood advocates were concerned only with winning full voting rights for district residents, they would be open to supporting retrocession. There is a precedent, and the voting-rights argument would be untainted by partisan motive. No, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser would not become Gov. Bowser, as she would in the Democrats' bill, but hundreds of thousands of district residents, the vast majority of them Democrats, would win the right to elect voting representatives in the House and Senate in their new home state of Maryland.
Instead, under the House Democrats' plan, a new state would be created, with an entire state government and those two new senators and one new representative.
A lot of Republicans dismiss the statehood effort as impossible. It will never pass in the Senate, they say. And it won't -- for now, at least. But what if a Democrat is elected to the White House this November, and the party wins a majority in the Senate, while keeping the House? All that will stand in the way of D.C. statehood becoming law is a Republican filibuster in the Senate. And then, there is a good bet that Senate Democrats will use the nuclear option to kill the legislative filibuster. If that happens, D.C. statehood could become a reality.
You’d be giving CA SIX Demonrat Senators and maybe a 50/50 chance one of the upstate NY Senators would be a Republican.
I think CA would have 4 GOP and 2 Dems if they divided it into 3
Western NY would be hard core GOP- I live here, I see it
ALSO- if that were true, libs would be screaming for it.
Same with Convention of States- Libs keep warning us how they would get everything they wanted in a COS... If that were true they would be screaming for it.
Not at this point. They’ve been reduced to 7 out of 53 House seats (due to cheating and other chicanery). That would mean you’d get zero Senate seats now. If this were still the ‘90s, you could’ve gotten 4 out of 6. Not anymore.
Depends upon where you’d draw the lines. Unless you were to include Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk, the largest county would be Erie, and they are far from reliably Republican. The other most populous counties voted Demonrat for President (Monroe, Onondaga, Albany, et al). As I said, under ideal circumstances, you might squeeze out one (like PA), but the NE is too unreliable for the GOP anymore. I still believe you’d end up with 4 Demonrats.
We can’t even get the states/federal government to obey our present Constitution. Going to a convention would be ill-advised at this point because it would backfire on us. I guarantee that.
Approval of that proposed amendment is a dealbreaker.
Agree. Have yet to hear a way to ensure the yahoos you sen to a ConCon would obey their masters once off leash.
Re: “California needs to be divided into 3 states.”
Not helpful.
Current Congressional Districts - 85% Democrat
2016 Presidential Election:
Clinton - 62%
Trump - 32%
The best we can hope for with three new states would be a half dozen new Congressional RINOS - like GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Re: “The silent majority no longer exists.”
I agree.
Third World immigrants and their American born children are 65%-75% Democrat.
There are 62 million of them.
Not all of them are voting age, but, they are the swing vote in at least 10 formerly Republican states.
When new immigrant citizens and their voting age children begin to turn out in record numbers, the game is up for Conservatives.
The Republican Party - including Trump - have enthusiastically committed political suicide.
Puerto Rico before Washington DC. Heck, Virgin Islands or Samoa before DC.
Most people do not realize that 20% of Puerto Rico has moved to the USA mainland since the Great Recession.
Most of them moved to central Florida and the New York City metro area.
Bump
Didn’t Texas’ entry come with a stipulation that they could subdivide into 5 if they wanted to?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.