Yeni Wong, a most influential leader and a longtime
resident of Washington, DC, called for a citywide vote in November 2016 on
making the nation’s capital the fifty-first state, resurrecting a decades-old
plan to thrust the issue before Congress and raise awareness across the country
about District residents’ lack of full citizenship.
“I propose we take another bold step toward democracy in
the District of Columbia,” Yeni said during an exclusive interview. “It’s going
to require that we send a bold message to the Congress and the rest of the
country that we demand not only a vote in the House of Representatives,” she
said. “We demand two senators—the full rights of citizenship in this great
nation.”
Her message appeared poised to ratchet up tension between
the District’s Democratic majority and its federal overseers in a
Republican-controlled Congress.
The District has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming,
and its residents pay more in federal taxes than those in twenty-two states but
have no vote in Congress. Conservative members of Congress often use their
authority to dictate social policy in the city by blocking locally elected
officials from using local tax revenue to enact policies relating to abortion,
guns, and drugs.
“In the case of our nation’s capital, we have an entire
populace that is routinely denied a voice in its own democracy…Washingtonians
serve in the military, serve on juries, and pay taxes just like everyone else.
And yet, they don’t even have a vote in Congress,” Yeni blasted.
Yeni further said that “solidarity” with disenfranchised
Democratic voters in DC was no longer enough. “We need a solution,” she cried
out. “That’s why, as a community leader, I will be a vocal champion for DC
statehood.”
The message from Yeni also appeared sure to embolden DC
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and other longtime advocates for statehood on the eve of
a showdown with Congress over the District’s power to make more independent
spending decisions.
Activists and elected officials in the District have long
pushed to turn the nation’s capital into the nation’s fifty-first state. But
the fight for statehood will see more activity this year than it has over the
past three decades—a constitutional convention, a referendum on whether DC
should become a state, and, if all goes to plan, a formal petition delivered to
the next president and Congress to grant the city statehood. Yeni also admits
the time line is aggressive and the outcome unsure, but she said that the
timing and political conditions for a renewed push for statehood are as good as
they could be.
The following is a partial transcript of the conversation,
edited for clarity and length.
What’s Mayor Bowser’s plan exactly?
There are three ways DC could become a state: by amending
the Constitution, by having Congress pass a bill granting the city statehood,
or by formally petitioning Congress to admit DC into the Union as the
fifty-first state. All three have been tried at one point or another, but city
officials have settled on the third option for the current push for statehood
because they say it is less difficult than amending the Constitution and more
proactive than simply waiting for Congress to debate and vote on a bill making
DC a state. (There’s a statehood bill currently in Congress, but it hasn’t gone
anywhere.)
The plan has two big components: a constitutional
convention on June 17–18, 2016 to produce a state constitution,
and the referendum in November, when residents will be able to weigh in on
whether they want DC to become a state or not. Provided that residents say yes,
DC would then submit the state constitution and proposed boundaries for the new
state to Congress for consideration. This approach has a historical precedent:
In 1795, Tennessee—then a territory—drafted a constitution and held a
referendum on whether it should ask Congress for admission to the Union as a
state. The request was made the following year, and Congress approved it, making
Tennessee the nation’s sixteenth state.
Wait, hasn’t DC tried this before?
Yes. In 1982, a state constitution was drawn up and was
approved by DC voters; it was then submitted to Congress as part of a petition
for the “State of New Columbia” to be accepted to the Union. There was intense
opposition to certain provisions of the city’s proposed constitution—including
one that guaranteed all DC residents employment and fair wages—so the push for
statehood went nowhere. The DC council updated the state constitution in 1987,
removing some of the provisions that had provoked opposition, but it was never
formally submitted to Congress as part of a petition for statehood.
In the decades since, a number of different approaches
have been tried to achieve statehood (or something like it):. For
example, a constitutional amendment was proposed that would have
given DC full voting representation in Congress, but it failed after only
sixteen states ratified it;. Then a
bill to give DC a full voting representative in the House picked up steam in
2007 before being killed when a Republican senator added an amendment that
would have gutted the city’s gun laws.
Why this and why now?
Mayor Bowser and other city officials say the timing is
ripe for a new statehood petition to be submitted to Congress. A new president
will be in office—a Democrat, they hope—and the makeup of Congress could well
be different than it is today. Additionally, they say that support for
statehood is high among DC residents, and that
over the last decade, DC has proven that it can govern itself responsibly.
So how will DC function as a state?
Mayor Bowser will unveil a draft of the state
constitution. It will be debated and revised during the constitutional
convention and will have to be approved by the DC council. The draft will
largely reflect the city’s current governing structure, which is laid out in
the Home Rule Charter, but hasn’t offered much more by way of details. But the
state constitution approved by the council in 1987 offers us guidance on what DC the
state of DC could look like.
Under that constitution, the mayor was replaced by a
governor, and the thirteen-member DC council was replaced by a
twenty-five-member unicameral house of delegates: a president, eight at-large
members, and sixteen members elected to represent specific districts. The city
would take control of its court system; currently, the federal government pays
for the city’s courts. DC would also gain full budgetary and legislative
autonomy and likely be able to do things it can’t do now, like such
as impose a commuter tax. And DC residents would get full
representation on Capitol Hill: two senators and a representative.
Is this even constitutional?
It depends on whom you ask.
Opponents of the plan say that the founders created the city as a federal
district separate from any state and that giving DC statehood would
fundamentally alter that constitutional arrangement. But proponents argue that
they aren’t getting rid of the federal district altogether—it would merely be
shrunk down to encompass only the city’s monumental core, leaving the rest of
the city’s land to become a new state.
But how are we even going to fit a fifty-first state on
the flag?
It’s already been designed! (Albeit under the expectation
that Puerto Rico would become the fifty-first state.)
And is this new state really going to be called “New
Columbia”?
That was the name that proponents came up with during the
statehood push in the 1980s, but there’s no requirement that the city adopt it
this time around. Have a better suggestion?
So if this all goes according to plan, what will DC
residents be voting on in November?
The advisory referendum being planned for November 2016
is a vital element of the plan; without an expression of public support—likesuch
as when 83 percent of DC residents voted in support of budget
autonomy—a petition for statehood wouldn’t go very far.
How do you think President Obama even supported or
addressed DC statehood in his State of the Union?
Despite promising to fight for DC voting rights during his
2008 presidential campaign, Obama never took on the issue in a meaningful way,
to the dismay of many African American leaders in the city. In fact, Obama
alienated some DC residents when, in 2011, he effectively traded away the city’s
right to fund abortions for low-income women in a budget deal with House
Republicans.
Is the DC statehood issue in the 2016 presidential race?
Presidential contender Hillary Clinton has joined her
opponent in the Democratic primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders, in backing
statehood for the District of Columbia, pledging to support a movement that is
gaining steam locally as the city prepares to debate a constitution that it
would submit to Congress next year as part of a formal petition for statehood.
“Solidarity is no longer enough. We need a solution,” Clinton wrote in an op-ed
published in the Washington Informer.
“That’s why, as president, I will be a vocal champion for DC statehood.”
What’s the case for DC statehood?
Statehood would give DC residents full representation in
Congress, which they currently lack., in
Congress. It would also prevent Congress from interfering in local
laws that don’t typically fall under congressional jurisdiction in any other US
city or state. DC currently votes for delegates to Congress, but the
representatives are largely symbolic figures with no voting rights in the
legislative chambers. But DC residents still have to, for example, pay federal
taxes, even as they have no voice in the legislative body that sets those tax
rates. (Statehood advocates have criticized this with the motto “taxation
without representation,” which appears on DC license plates and is a twist on
the Revolution-era rallying call against the British empire.)
DC residents also have limited say in who will be in the
president’s cabinet, head any federal agency, or serve on any federal court
because it’s ultimately up to the Senate, where DC delegates have no voting
power, to approve those appointments. Statehood would also remove what many
advocates characterize as Congress’s needless meddling in DC’s local affairs.
Statehood advocates want DC, like any other city or state in the country, to be
able to set its own laws and budgets without getting any form of congressional
approval. They point to numerous examples in which Congress held up local laws
for marijuana policy, gun control, and even combating HIV/AIDS.
“We want to be treated just like any other state,” Eleanor
Norton, the district’s nonvoting delegate in the House, previously said. “To understand
statehood, you have to understand what it means to be unequal in your own
country.”
What’s the case against DC statehood?
There’s a simple mathematical reason for all sitting
representatives and senators, even Democrats, to oppose statehood. If another
state were allowed into the Union, it would dilute the vote of currently
serving federal lawmakers and therefore make it slightly more difficult for
these lawmakers to pass laws that favor the states they represent. Under the
current setup, each senator makes up 1 percent of the Senate. If another state
joined the United States, that would tick down to slightly less than 1 percent.
Some in Congress say…the reason why DC residents can’t behave
fully access to the franchised
is because of too many Democrats. Can you believe that? Do you think access to
democracy is a Democratic or Republican issue? No, it’s an American issue.
Please explain why Washington, DC, should be the
fifty-first state.
We have no voting representation in Congress, no rights of
local self-government, and no protection from key constitutional rights, such
as those found in the Fourteenth Amendment, because DC residents do not live in
a state. Congress can override our local budget and local laws in ways that it
cannot elsewhere. Yet we bear all the responsibilities of citizenship,
including paying federal taxes, serving on federal juries, serving in the
military, and raising local money from local taxpayers to pay for our local
government. We have endured this injustice for over two hundred years, but
there is a solution. We can make the residential and commercial areas of
Washington, DC, the fifty-first state of New Columbia, while preserving a
smaller District of Columbia (containing the Capitol, White House, Supreme
Court, National Mall, and other federal properties) as the Constitution
requires.
If Washington, DC,
became the fifty-first state, the people who live there could finally enjoy the same
rights that other Americans enjoy. We can do this without a constitutional
amendment with a simple majority vote in Congress. This is how all the states
since the original thirteen have been admitted to the Union. It is the
simplest, most straightforward way to grant DC residents the same rights as other
Americans. Legislation to create the fifty-first state is before both houses of
Congress. The good news is that statehood for the people of Washington, DC, has
more support today than it has ever had before, including from ten
members of Congress from neighboring Maryland and Virginia. The challenge is
that to pass the legislation, we will need the support of people throughout the
fifty states.
Anything you want to add?
With 672,228 residents last year, Washington,
DC, has a larger population than two actual states: Vermont and
Wyoming. And its economy is larger than those of sixteen
other states. Yet it does not have full representation in Congress, and no new
states have been added since Hawaii in 1959. The New Columbia Admission Act,
H.R. 317 and S. 1688, would formally change this by making the District of
Columbia an official state named New Columbia.
Currently, not only does the District of Columbia have no
voting members of the House or Senate, butbut also
its budget and laws are all subject to congressional approval—a lack of
autonomy that no other state shares. Congress has tried to overturn DC laws on
issues from education to contraception to legalized marijuana. For example, DC
residents could be drafted into the military
but can’t vote for senators or representatives who would vote on whether to
authorize a war. The concept of statehood has perhaps never been more popular
among either the Democratic Party or the city itself. Polling done for over two
decades on the subject saw a new high in support last year, with 67 percent of
residents and 71 percent of registered voters in the District supporting
statehood.