How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [156]
This field of failures was the terrain into which Norton ventured in 1990. Over the years, the struggle had become further complicated by the terrain dividing into various battlefields: statehood, retrocession to Maryland, territorial status, and limited voting rights. But risky terrain for fundamental rights had always attracted her. Though a rookie in Congress and, as a nonvoting delegate, batting without a bat, she made her play within months of her election. The Washington Post reported:
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton … acknowledging that statehood faces an uphill battle, introduced legislation that would create the state of New Columbia.… Under Norton’s bill, the boundaries of the new state would be the same as the District’s, excluding the Mall and other federal landmarks such as the White House. These would be made part of a federal enclave that would remain under direct congressional control.… Critics have long contended that the Constitution would have to be amended to achieve statehood.
Over the years, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have consistently opposed or supported DC statehood. During his 1991–92 presidential campaign, Democrat Bill Clinton supported DC statehood despite having opposed it as the governor of Arkansas.6 Likewise, among present-day Republicans there are some who maintain that Congress can extend voting representation to DC residents without having to amend the Constitution. Two of the most prominent of such Republicans are Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, then appointed solicitor general by President George H. W. Bush, and later selected to be the independent counsel investigating misconduct by President Clinton.7 In his 2004 testimony before Congress, Starr pointed out:
The judiciary has rightly shown great deference where Congress announces its considered judgment that the District should be considered a “State” for specific legislative purposes.… In 1949, the Supreme Court’s Tidewater decision … confirmed what is now the law: the Constitution’s use of the word “State” in Article III cannot mean “and not of the District of Columbia.” Identical logic supports legislation to enfranchise the District’s voters: the use of the word “State” in Article I cannot bar Congress from exercising its plenary authority [over the District] to extend the franchise to the District’s voters.
Despite the fact that Starr and Hatch agreed that the Constitution need not be amended to provide voting representation to the District, politicians from both parties continued to invoke the need for a constitutional amendment in order to cloak other concerns. “Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton bristled several times when witnesses contended that the proposed statehood legislation is unconstitutional,” the Washington Post reported in March 1992, when her bill was under consideration by the House Committee on the District of Columbia. The following month, the committee sent Norton’s bill to the floor of the House. With every (nonretiring) member of the House having to face the voters in November, opponents of representation for the District now uncloaked their actual concerns. “President Bush recently criticized a District law expanding homosexual rights,” the Post reported in a May 1992 article headlined, “Statehood Stirs Up Opposition.” The article quoted a mass mailing by Senator Jesse Helms that told voters, “I’ve already got my hands full fighting the far-left, ultra-liberals in Congress. And the last thing I need is having to battle Jesse Jackson.” (At the time, African American leader Jesse Jackson lived in the District of Columbia.)
This opposition effort, which its backers ratcheted up as the November election approached, succeeded. “Citing recent overwhelming defeats for the District on issues such as the