Mayor Wants Statehood Vote This Year By D.C. Residents

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wants residents to vote this November on whether the nation's capital should become the 51st state.

Bowser says the vote, which would ultimately have no legal force, would serve to express the city's opinion on whether it should become a state or remain a federal district under congressional control. She made the announcement during a Friday breakfast commemorating D.C. Emancipation Day, the day in 1862 when President Lincoln freed 3,100 slaves in the city.

"Residents of the District of Columbia have said they don't just want to sit by and wait for the Congress," she says. "Just like they went to the polls to say that we need budget autonomy, we want to demonstrate, by a vote, the support of statehood by the residents."

In 2013, 83 percent of D.C. residents voted in a referendum to amend the city's Home Rule Charter to grant city officials budget autonomy, or more flexibility in spending locally raised revenue. A D.C. judge recently upheld that referendum, and this summer Bowser and the D.C. Council are expected to submit their first budget under the provisions of that referendum.

But statehood — or even lesser arrangements — have always been a more difficult sell. The District gained home rule in 1973, but in 1985 failed to gain enough support among the 50 states for a constitutional amendment that would have granted it full representation in Congress.

In 1993, the U.S. House of Representatives voted down a bill that would have made D.C. the 51st state, and in 2007 the Senate rejected a bill that would have given the city a full voting members of the House, instead of the non-voting delegate it currently has.

More recently, a bill that would shrink the federal district to just the city's monumental core and turn the rest of the city into the 51st state was debated in a Senate committee, but never got to a floor vote. Proponents say the bill is the city's best shot at statehood, while opponents deride it as an unconstitutional attempt to get two more Democratic senators in the chamber.

Bowser says statehood is the only solution that will bring D.C. residents the equality and voice she says they deserve.

"Every American has two senators, and the only way to get two senators is to become a state," she says. "We can think of all the different things senators do that we continue to be shut out of — the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court justices, for one."

She concedes that the vote would have no legal force — only Congress can accept new states to the union — but argues that it could bring national attention to the issue.

"While we may have some elected officials who have expressed skepticism on partisan line, nobody has really come up with a justification for how American citizens in the capital should be denied the vote. We will have to educate and get champions from across the nation," she says.

Last year, a Washington Post poll found that 67 percent of D.C. residents support statehood.