Eleanor Holmes Norton takes a Biblical joke as a credo.
“What would the Jews have done if the Red Sea hadn’t parted?” she said in a recent interview. “The answer? Learnto swim under water.”
Her opponent for the District delegate’s seat, Andy Miscuk, might draw his inspiration from the Bible, too: David versus Goliath.
Norton, 69, is an eight-term member of Congress who helped invent the role of “delegate.”
But Miscuk, 40, says Norton has been an absentee leader for most of her 16 years in Congress.
“The delegate’s interests are elsewhere,” Miscuk said. “She’s got the shortest commute in Congress and we never see her out in the community.”
Miscuk, an Advisory Neighborhood commissioner from Northwest, may be a long shot against Norton — she has outraised him by more than 10 to 1 — but the fact that he’s taking a shot at all is important.
For most of her career, Norton has been unchallenged in the role as D.C.’s non-voting delegate.
Norton said she deserves another term.
“Without a vote, I’m close to bringing home a vote for D.C.,” Norton said, referring to a House bill that would give D.C. a voting member of Congress. “Without a vote and with 12 of my 16 years in a Republican Congress, I have brought home benefits that have palpably benefited residents.”
Miscuk said he wants the race to be about making an activist of the delegate’s seat. Norton said she’s made a lifetime as an activist — but one who knows how to pick her battles.
“I spent 12 years negotiating with Republicans and learning to swim under water,” she said. “Some of the best friends I have in Congress are appropriators and our bills just sail on through.”
Miscuk is a former Green Beret who came to the District from Pittsburgh as a computer consultant. Norton is a third-generation Washingtonian with a long pedigree in the civil rights movement.
This delegate’s race might be the most important in decades: If the D.C. voting rights bill passes, the next delegate will become D.C.’s first representative.
