Proponents of a bill that would have awarded the District a voting representative in Congress came up three votes short of a critical test vote in the Senate on Tuesday, essentially killing the legislation until 2009.
The bill’s backers have pledged to try again, and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., hinted that he might allow another vote on the bill during this Congress, though he would not say when.
“This is the right thing to do — 600,000 people in our country without a right to vote,” Reid said.
Critics of the bill, all of them Republicans, said it would be illegal to simply award the District a vote in Congress without amending the Constitution.
Republican leaders hammered home that point in a closed party meeting that concluded just minutes before the vote.
“I don’t believe we in Congress should pass legislation that we know is unconstitutional,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
The Senate vote marked the most progress a District voting bill has made in Congress in 30 years. The House passed the bill earlier this year. In an effort to keep the pressure on Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., and the District’s Democratic mayor, Adrian M. Fenty, stood on the floor of the Senate during the vote.
Members of the D.C. Council and other city officials and activists were present in the viewing gallery when the Senate president announced that the test vote had been defeated, 57 to 42. Sixty approvals are required for the test vote to pass.
“It is very disappointing to come so close and then fail,” D.C. Council Member Jack Evans said as he walked through the halls of the Senate. “It’s a setback, but we’ll never give up. We’ll continue to push for it.”
The bill would have given the Democratic-leaning District a voting representative in the House. In an effort to diffuse any political bias, the legislation would have also added a Republican-leaning seat in Utah, which in any event is slated to get a fourth representative in the House in 2010.
Under current law, Norton is permitted to vote on legislation as long as her ballot does not affect the outcome.
Only days ago, Norton believed 61 senators planned to vote in favor of moving forward on the bill. Support was lost, Norton said, because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a staunch opponent, put heavy pressure on Republicans to vote no.
“He appeared to have pulled out all the stops,” Norton said as she stood outside the Senate chamber.
Most Republicans said their decision not to support the bill boiled down to their understanding of the Constitution.
“It’s clear that D.C. is not a state, it is a special district,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. “That is the way the founders intended it.”
