Backers of D.C. voting bill optimistic

Supporters of the D.C. voting rights bill say they believe they have the 60 votes necessary for Tuesday’s cloture vote, but concede it will be a close call.

{mosads}Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) gathered alongside D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and other civil rights leaders Monday to call on senators to let the bill reach a floor vote.

“If they try to filibuster, essentially what they would be saying is that we don’t even deserve a full vote,” Holmes Norton said.

Supporters are concerned that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will filibuster the measure on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

McConnell has stood firm in his opposition to the measure. As he argues, the District should not have a voting member because it is not a state. Rather, citizens should amend the U.S. Constitution to create the seat.

“We recommit ourselves to the task of upholding and defending the wise and durable document [the Founders] wrote. As its political children, we consider it an honor and a sacred duty to defend it,” he said in a floor statement Monday.

The bill would increase the size of the House to 437 from 435 members by giving D.C. a voting member and requiring Utah to redistrict in 2008 so that it also gains a seat.

“We cannot, we must not, circumvent the Constitution by arrogating powers to ourselves that it does not give us itself,” he said. “To do so would be to undermine the law from which all others in this nation derive.”

At the Monday event, D.C. Vote executive director Ilir Zherka said the measure should be allowed to go to a full vote. “We’re calling on Mitch McConnell to stand down so that democracy can go forward,” he said.

No senator has filibustered a voting rights bill since the days of segregation, Fenty said in expressing his support for the measure.

“We know that the Founders had no loopholes when they talked about voting rights for all citizens of this country,” he said.

Jack Kemp, the former U. S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a supporter of the bill, called on Republicans to “get on the right side of history.”

Karen Rose, a Democracy for America member, was one of about 100 supporters who helped deliver letters to senators urging them to vote for cloture. She argued that the bill “goes right to the heart of what our organization is about — fair and equal representation.”

One such letter, written by Holmes Norton, read: “I do not believe that most members of the Senate … would want to be associated with the filibusters or filibuster threats that have denied many citizens of the nation’s capital their rights for more than two centuries.”