Why is Washington, DC not a state?

ON A LIST of American states and territories ordered by area, Washington, DC is at the very bottom: nearly 10,000 Washingtons could fit into Alaska. Reorder that list by federal taxes paid per person, and Washington finishes first. But unlike residents of the 50 states, Washingtonians are unrepresented in Congress. They have no senators, and just one non-voting House delegate—Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has held the job for 30 years. Washingtonians could not vote in presidential elections until 1964. Not until 1974 were they permitted to elect their own municipal government, and the city still cannot pass laws or even an annual budget without Congressional review. Its residents are tiring of this arrangement. In a referendum in 2016, 85% of them said they wanted statehood. On March 22nd the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a hearing on the idea. Why have Washingtonians been stateless for so long?

Washington did not replace Philadelphia as America’s capital until 1800, as a result of a bargain struck a decade earlier between Alexander Hamilton, then treasury secretary, and James Madison, a congressman from Virginia—reportedly over dinner at Thomas Jefferson’s home in New York. Hamilton wanted the federal government to assume debts acquired by states during the Revolutionary War. That would have created a system of public credit, and given Hamilton power to shape the young country’s economy. Madison, who like many southerners was wary of federal power, opposed the measure. But in exchange for Hamilton’s support for moving the capital out of the North, and reducing Virginia’s tax obligation, Madison rallied support for the treasury secretary’s measure, allowing it to become law. The capital was moved from Pennsylvania to a plot of land at the head of the Potomac River, adjacent to the port town of Georgetown (now one of DC’s most charming and expensive neighbourhoods).

The constitution grants Congress jurisdiction over the district designated as the seat of the federal government. In some ways this allowed DC to be ahead of its time. It outlawed slavery eight-and-a- half months before Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation and gave African-American men voting rights in 1867, three years before the 15th Amendment extended that right nationally (although African-American citizens continue to face hurdles that keep them from the ballot box, even after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965). Yet this freedom was short-lived. In the early 1870s Congress stripped DC’s voting rights to curtail the growing political power of African-American Washingtonians. John Tyler Morgan, a senator from Alabama and former confederate general, later said that Congress had “to burn down the barn to get rid of the rats...the rats being the negro population and the barn being the government of the District of Columbia”.

Contemporary opponents of statehood for DC are not so blatantly racist. The main reason why Republicans oppose it today is that it would add two seats in the Senate, as well as one in the House, all of which would probably be held by Democrats (since 1964, when Washingtonians first voted in a presidential election, no Republican has won the city’s three electoral votes, and not since Jimmy Carter in 1980 has a Democrat received less than 75% of the vote). It would also strengthen calls for other American territories, such as Puerto Rico, to become states, which Republicans worry would further increase the influence of Democrats. And it would divest Congress of its authority over DC, which lawmakers have exerted to block policies proposed by the city council.

Attempts over the years to induct DC into the union as the 51st state have repeatedly failed, but recent events are giving the cause new momentum. Last summer Donald Trump ordered federal forces to disband Black Lives Matter protests against the wishes of DC’s mayor. It “was the physical manifestation of the District’s disenfranchisement,” says Ms Norton. The city’s lack of authority over its national guard also meant it was slow to respond when insurrectionists assaulted the Capitol on January 6th. The Washington, DC Admission Act—which would carve out an enclave, putting federal buildings within a stateless national capital, but create the new “State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth,” where most of its residents live—passed the House in June 2020; its sister Senate bill has more co-sponsors than any previous statehood measure. President Joe Biden also has signalled his support, but with the Senate split 50-50, it is unlikely Democrats will achieve a filibuster-proof majority. DC’s advocates may find it will take a compromise, like that in 1790, to find a way forward.