Measure Offers Norton More Voting Power

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 20, 2007

A senior House Democrat announced yesterday the party will introduce a measure next week that would allow D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton to vote on amendments on the floor of the chamber.

The D.C. delegate is allowed to vote only in House committees. Norton (D) has been fighting for a bill that would grant the District one full voting member in the House, and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) announced yesterday a campaign to support that measure.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), the House majority leader, announced yesterday that the chamber will vote Wednesday on a rule change that would grant the voting power to Norton and other non-state delegates. A similar measure was passed by the Democratic-controlled House in 1993, but it was rolled back by Republicans who took control two years later.

Norton said yesterday that she was grateful for Hoyer's move but that it wasn't enough and could even confuse supporters of broader voting powers for the District.

When she was given the vote on amendments in 1993, "it was a great leap forward," she said. "Today, of course, it would be a terrible setback to concentrate" on the more limited voting powers.

Norton spoke hours after Fenty (D) announced a "people's march" on Congress in April to press for full representation for the District. He also said he would call on volunteers to join a Feb. 15 lobbying day on Capitol Hill to push for action on the voting rights bill.

Fenty, who was sworn into office Jan. 2, has called voting rights "the city's Number One priority." The popular mayor has jumped on the issue, lobbying congressional representatives and joining Norton in meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to urge her support.

But Norton clashed openly with Fenty at his news conference yesterday, saying the voting rights bill she reintroduced recently faces a crucial period in the next two months, and a large march shouldn't wait until April.

"Any action of D.C. on behalf of this bill has to happen in February and early March," Norton told the news conference. By April, she said, the House will be tied up with a raft of defense and appropriations bills.

The news conference reflected tensions between two of the city's top elected officials. Norton said she had not been informed of the date for the march -- April 16, Emancipation Day -- until she arrived at yesterday's event. Members of her staff said later that they had been told the exact date but mentioned only the month to Norton.

Most of the D.C. Council appeared with Fenty to express support for the campaign for voting rights. Also present were Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), co-sponsor of the D.C vote bill.

"We want everyone on Emancipation Day to be talking about the fact D.C. has got to have full voting rights," Fenty said, announcing the march down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Emancipation Day marks the day -- April 16, 1862 -- that President Abraham Lincoln signed an act freeing more than 3,100 slaves in the District of Columbia. The District made the day an official city holiday in 2005.

Norton thanked Fenty for his support but said April is too late to mobilize citizens. And she said the lobbying day in February isn't enough.

"A zillion groups come up to lobby," she said. The bill "will get attention from Congress when they see those citizens" in the streets.

Fenty then indicated he might switch course and turn the lobbying day into a mass event.

"We're going to make that as big as humanly possible," he said.

Mayoral aides and D.C. vote supporters said they were dismayed by Norton's public disagreement with Fenty. The mayor and Norton met after the news conference to iron out their differences and agreed to work together on the events, Norton said.

The bill co-sponsored by Norton and Davis would add two seats to the House -- one for the District, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, and one for heavily Republican Utah.

The measure was approved by one House committee in the last Congress, but it did not reach the floor for a vote.

Supporters say the bipartisan bill offers the city its best hope in years of getting a representative with full voting rights in the House. Opponents have questioned whether it is constitutional. And some people have said it does not go far enough because it would not give the District voting representation in the Senate.

The rule change to be introduced Wednesday would allow Norton and the other delegates to vote in the committee of the whole, which handles most major House votes -- except on the final passage of legislation.

The added voting power would have an important caveat, though: If the delegates cast the deciding votes, other legislators could disregard the decision and request a new vote, without the delegates' participation.