Many Democrats dream of ways to ensure they never lose power again. This is why they want to eliminate the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, and make the District of Columbia a state.
As D.C. celebrates 50 years of “home rule,” here are five reasons that autonomy—let alone statehood—isn’t a good idea.
1. The Constitution
The U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to create a “District (not exceeding ten Miles square)” to “become the Seat of the Government of the United States.” In 1790, Congress created Washington, D.C., which was to be run by three commissioners appointed by the president.
Two and a half centuries later, the residents of this district should know what the deal is: D.C. was never meant to be a state itself.
D.C. residents can, at any time, relocate to any state in the country. In 1964, they were allowed to vote for president. They have a nonvoting representative in Congress. The current mayor and all 13 D.C. Council members, except for two nominal “independents,” are Democrats.
On Nov. 5, 92.5% of D.C. voters went for Kamala Harris for president. If you want to imagine what two D.C. senators would look like politically, check out D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.
Democrats want to lock in two senators like that, forever. That was not the Founders’ intention.
2. Crime
Over 1,000 carjackings occurred last year in the District of Columbia. This year, we’re supposed to be happy that the number reportedly has declined, along with some other crimes.
But in the past year, the Secret Service has foiled two attempted carjackings in the best parts of Washington. The general sense of the population is that D.C. is returning to the bad old days of the 1970s and ’80s.
Mentally ill vagrants, turnstile jumpers, shoplifters, and street racers perpetuate a climate of incivility and impunity. At the CVS drugstore near the White House, they lock up toilet paper. In less tony locations, they lock up everything.
In really tough D.C. neighborhoods, they just close the stores. Retail theft is a major impediment to businesses large and small, and store closures further impoverish already disadvantaged neighborhoods.
3. Education
Spending per student in the District of Columbia is the second highest in the nation, yet the results are abysmal. Truancy rates are high. Test scores are low on average, although a few schools do better.
Only 33.7% of students who took D.C.’s assessment test last year “met or exceeded grade level expectations” in English. Only 22.5% did so in math.
As a result, most parents who can afford it either enter their kids in the lottery for charter schools after fifth grade or send them to private school. Back in the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, sent his daughter Amy to Hardy Middle School in the Glover Park neighborhood.
Two later Democrat presidents—Bill Clinton in the 1990s and Barack Obama after him—sent their daughters to Sidwell Friends, an expensive private school a mile away from Hardy and Glover Park. That says a lot.
4. Homelessness and Vagrancy
Last year, I wrote to Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, about illegal tent encampments on public land. A few weeks later, the National Park Service removed a long-standing campsite in front of the State Department and another near the Kennedy Center.
The result wasn’t a renovated green space for locals and visitors to enjoy, but a fenced-off area no one can enter, with benches no one can sit on. Is this “progressive”?
Meanwhile, although the federal agency cleared trespassing campers, the D.C. government ignores violations on the land it controls.
A few weeks ago, a man set up a tent on the pedestrian overpass at Virginia Avenue and I-66. He observably suffered from mental illness. In addition to shouting at strangers, the man set small cooking fires outside and even inside his tent. Here’s a photo in which you can see orange flames from a fire through the fabric of the tent at left:
Letting a troubled person pitch a tent anywhere he wants is both unsafe for him and the community. The man eventually was removed, but tents keep popping up on public D.C. land, singly or in groups, including these ones:
5. Corruption
The District of Columbia recently celebrated 50 years of controlling its own affairs.
Before President Richard Nixon granted this “home rule,” the president picked a mayor and commissioners to handle everything from traffic to trash. Congress managed education.
Home rule was a mixed blessing. With local control came local corruption. No one symbolized that better than “Mayor for Life” Marion Barry. A statue of Barry stands outside D.C. city hall on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
The plinth below the statue reads: “Mr. Barry was a larger than life figure—a man who could both lead the protest as an activist and engage the protest as Mayor.”
But Barry is also remembered for the city’s corruption and for his personal failings. Washington Post columnist Colbert King explains how Barry served six months in jail for crack cocaine possession, failed to pay taxes, and was censured twice by the D.C. Council for misconduct.
Sadly, the tradition of D.C. voters reelecting politicians despite corruption is alive and well. Council member Trayon White was indicted recently on charges of taking bribes to throw city contracts to friends. With photos appearing to show White taking envelopes of cash from an FBI informant, he has some ’splainin’ to do.
Despite this, White was reelected to his Ward 8 seat on the D.C. Council with 84% of the vote. His trial has been put off until 2026, pending which he’ll remain a voting council member, collecting a salary of $161,000 and deciding where to spend our tax dollars.
Washington, D.C., is the capital of a great nation. It has remarkable museums and buildings.
But it is in all respects just a midsize city, without any of the hinterland, industry, agriculture, and other attributes even the smallest of our 50 states needs to be a peer with the others. The city’s residents deserve better government, but not statehood.
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