D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is expected to meet today with President Bush’s chief of staff to discuss the volatile voting rights issue, as House Democrats solidify their procedural response to a Republican maneuver that derailed last week’s vote.
Fenty said Friday he has a scheduled meeting with Joshua Bolten to lobby on behalf of the voting rights bill. The face-to-face comes just as the president’s opposition to D.C. voting rights takes an aggressive turn: A policy statement issued last week warned that if the bill passes, the Bush’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill on constitutional grounds.
The voting rights legislation, heralded as a bipartisan compromise to end the 200-year-old disenfranchisement, would expand the House from 435 to 437 seats, with one going to the District and the other to Utah. The measure is co-sponsored by Virginia Republican Tom Davis and District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat.
Public debate over the bill in the House and among scholars has keyed on constitutional arguments. Supporters say Congress has exclusive authority to legislate over the District, including the power to grant the city a vote in the House. But critics say the constitution clearly provides only people “of the several states” with the right to representation, and D.C. is not a state.
On Thursday, just as the measure neared likely passage before the full House, Republican opponents used a parliamentary maneuver to nearly kill it. They attached a “poison pill” amendment to overturn the District’s strict handgun ban and forced conservative Democrats into a corner — support either voting rights or the right to bear arms.
Democratic leadership pulled the bill, pledging to return as soon as this week with a revised strategy. To prevent another procedural move, the debate rule will have to be tightly closed to prohibit any amendments or motions.
“The Democrats, while they may have been sidetracked, they will quickly get right back on track and we are committed to help them in any way we can,” Fenty said.
The bill’s opponents, including the Wall Street Journal, took a different tack. The measure, the paper wrote in a Friday editorial, is “another lesson in how politicians run roughshod over constitutional principles when it suits their narrow purposes.”
“Fearing that many in their party would support Second Amendment rights for District residents, the Democratic leadership shamefully exploited a rule to kill debate and postpone the vote indefinitely,” Minority Leader John Boehner said in a statement immediately following Thursday’s floor chaos.
