September 19, 2007
Washington, D.C. V Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 05:25 PM EST I’m not sure I want to engage John Steele Gordon on the question of whether D.C. statehood has faltered because of race politics, though I’ll admit to being extremely skeptical of his insistence that race and racism play no role in the matter. Some 58 percent of Washington residents are African-Americans, and 8 percent are Latinos. I have a difficult time imagining that the country would be so sanguine about the disenfranchisement of a federal district where two thirds of the citizens were white. At the end of the day, however, I think it’s politics, and pure politics, that drives the process. Many Republicans are unwilling to create a new Democratic seat in the House; they are certainly unwilling to create two new Democratic seats in the Senate. Where I’m willing to venture some disagreement with Mr. Gordon is over his suggestion that allowing Washington, D.C. two members of the Senate would constitute “grotesquely disproportionate representation in Congress. A middle-size city, with only 20 percent the area and less than 10 percent of New York City’s population would have had two senators of its very own, without even any suburbs to counterbalance the company town’s interest in an ever-expanding federal government and an ever increasing concentration of power there.” The current population of Washington, D.C., is about 581,000. Last year, Wyoming’s population was about 509,000. Vermont’s, 603,000. North Dakota’s, 636,000. Alaska’s, 663,000. All four states have two U.S. senators. What’s good for Wyoming is surely good for Washington, D.C. I’d also respectfully take issue with Mr. Gordon’s argument that Washington, D.C., is unusually vested in “an ever-expanding federal government and an ever increasing concentration of power there.” To be sure, the District’s bread and butter is the federal government. But was this not historically true of postwar Orange County, California, whose economic fortunes were so closely tied to federal defense spending and to federal irrigation and water projects, or vast swaths of the South, which relied on the federal government for subsidized electricity, dam projects, and agricultural subsidies? Moreover, including suburban Virginia and Maryland in metropolitan Washington’s political equation hardly dilutes the electorate’s interest in an expansive federal state. I would venture a guess that most people in the greater D.C. area who rely directly or indirectly on the federal government for their livelihoods actually live outside of the District.
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