By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 5, 2008

D.C. politicians will be watching New Hampshire next week, and not just because of the presidential primary Tuesday.

New Hampshire lawmakers are considering a rebuke of the state's two U.S. senators for opposing the D.C. vote bill in Congress. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and several District Council members plan to testify at a hearing in Concord onWednesday.

The resolution was sponsored by a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Cindy Rosenwald, at the request of D.C. Council member David A. Catania. He said he hopes it is the beginning of a new offensive to promote D.C. voting rights.

"We've talked ourselves to death about this issue, but we need to take our show on the road and build allies," said Catania (I-At Large).

New Hampshire senators John Sununu and Judd Gregg joined other Republicans in blocking the D.C. bill from getting an up-or-down Senate vote last September. It fell three votes short of the 60 necessary to end a filibuster.

Catania said he was so upset at the defeat that he turned to Rosenwald, whom he met through a state legislators organization. The Nashua Democrat agreed to sponsor the resolution, in part because she had been so impressed by D.C. license plates emblazoned "Taxation Without Representation," she said.

"In New England, you have that Boston Tea Party drilled into you," she said in an interview. "I guess I just was struck by the reality that the citizens of the District really are taxed without representation."

Fenty said he hopes the New Hampshire trip will provide visibility to the city's lack of a voting representative in Congress.

"The only way to get full voting rights is to make people aware of it and agitate and cajol," he said. "I like the idea of taking the lobbying out to other places and capitalizing on the presidential campaign, the focus on New Hampshire."

The resolution does not mandate any action by Sununu and Gregg, and their offices declined to comment yesterday . D.C. vote strategists are trying to get at least three senators to reverse their votes on the filibuster, which would permit the legislation to return to the floor this year. Senate staffers said that probably will be difficult.

Fenty, head of Barack Obama's District campaign, is scheduled to travel to New Hampshire on Tuesday for last-minute campaigning for the Democratic presidential candidate. D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) and eight other members of the 13-person council are set to join the mayor there Wednesday.

Council members will pay their own way, and Fenty is using leftover funds from his inaugural celebration, his spokesman said.

Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who plans to testify, said D.C. residents were "a bit demoralized" after the voting-rights bill failed.

"I think what you're seeing now is a revival" of the campaign for the vote, she said.

Rosenwald said the House committee on state-federal relations would hear testimony Wednesdayand will probably vote on it by the end of February. The resolution would then go to the full House, she said.

Rosenwald said that she doesn't know whether the measure will pass but that it has gotten a warm reception so far from New Hampshire Democrats, who hold a majority in the House. She had asked for the hearing to occur close to the date of the presidential primary because "the nation's attention is focused on us. . . . It brings it into focus."

Her resolution, co-sponsored by another House member and a state senator, expresses "regret" that New Hampshire's senators "voted to deny the District of Columbia the right to be represented in the Congress."

The D.C. vote bill would add two seats to the U.S. House of Representatives -- one for the heavily Democratic District and another for the next state in line to expand its delegation. That state is currently Utah, which leans Republican.

Catania said he hopes the measure will send a message that lawmakers could pay a price for opposing D.C. voting rights.

"I want to cause these members of Congress who are voting against voting rights . . . to wonder, 'What will this mean to me back home?' " he said.