Is D.C. The 51st State? How The Senate May Derail The Latest Effort

Several Republican senators have offered an alternative solution to D.C. statehood: retrocession or adding the District of Columbia to another state.

“There is a way to ensure that the residents of DC have voting representation in Congress, and that is for DC to become part of Maryland, just as parts of DC became parts of Virginia many years ago,” Maine Senator Susan Collins said on CNN. “That would give the residents of DC a new House member, and they would be represented in the Senate by Maryland senators.”

The House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation to make DC the 51st state in late April. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton who represents D.C. in the House urged lawmakers to support the proposal.

There are 700,000 residents who call the district home, but they do not have any representation or voting members in the House or the Senate. Holmes is its non-voting delegate in the House.

“According to a detailed poll, now 54% of the American people support DC statehood,” Holmes said. “That is the result of the hearings which have told the American people what they did not know. They were confused. Some Americans thoughts we had statehood. Many said they didn’t know. Some said they were against it.”

President Joe Biden supports H.R. 51 which political analysts suggest will add more political influence to the Democratic Party. African Americans comprise 45 percent of the population in Washington, DC according to the 2019 census projections.

Efforts to make D.C. the 51st state have advanced further than ever before, however, the bill needs 60 senators to support it which will require votes from moderate Republicans like Collins and Mitt Romney. But, all of the Democrats in the Senate are apparently not in favor of the legislation; Joe Manchin from West Virginia has said he does not support H.R. 51 in its current form.

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote a letter to residents, saying, “For 220 years, the injustice of taxation without representation has lived on in Washington, D.C. But now our nation has the opportunity, and a clear path forward, to finally right this wrong.”

Statehood supporters say the new state’s name would remain Washington, D.C., with the initials standing for Douglass Commonwealth after the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, instead of District of Columbia.