DC [Was Re: Puerto Rico and the election -Reply -Reply]

[Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law]

DC is now about 519,000 residents, well down from its peak of 800,000 or
so that I recall from when I was growing up there.  At that time it was
universally believed that a statehood amendment, or even an amendment
allowing representation 'as if' a state, would never pass the states due
to the overwhelmingly Democratic composition of the DC electorate (not to
mention that it's predominantly black) and the Republican control of a
blocking coalition of state legislatures.  All you had to do was whisper
'Senator Jesse Jackson' and there went a state ratification...

DC residents have taxation without (congressional, i.e. power of the tax
and purse) representation which ought to bother people much more than it
does. I truly believe this persists because in the main they are poor and
black. Even if one avoids looking for a race-based explanation, there's no
question that the people of DC have very little political clout and hence
few powerful advocates for just representation.

Being unrepresented also prevents the growth of a healthy local political
class.  I believe that the lack of meaningful offices to graduate to
(governorships, state legislature, congress) has discouraged many people
of talent and ambition from getting involved in the city council, which
has left it to others, which in turn contributed to an image (and, alas at
times reality) of a city unfit to govern itself.

DC used to have a larger population than several of the states.  Today,
according to my quick scan of the figures at
http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/state/st-99-1.txt its
population is larger than only Wyoming, having been fallen behind Alaska,
Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota and even Vermont, although they're
all in the same neighborhood.  I recall that when I was growing up its
population also paid more income tax than a few states; reciting that
statistic would then lead to bickering with Congress about the 'value' of
having 'services' like federal police forces.  We locals did not tend to
value those nearly as highly as Congress did.



On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Leslie Goldstein wrote:

> I agree with Art, that it does not make sense to read the
> territory-ruling power as somehow trumping the description of of the
> electoral college elsewhere in the Constitution.  I had completely
> forgotten about the 23rd amd. (how embarassing!)  I wonder why there
> is not more clamor in DC for a statehood amdnt.  What is its
> population size? LFG
>

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