In the last Congress, 43 Democratic senators co-sponsored legislation making D.C. a U.S. state. Four Democrats or independents who caucused with the Democrats did not join them—West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, Alabama’s Doug Jones, and Maine’s Angus King. It didn’t mean they opposed Washington statehood, they just weren’t going to go on the record as a co-sponsor. They didn’t need to, the legislation was never going to get anywhere with Republicans in charge of the Senate and the White House.
Today, the picture has changed dramatically.
Democrats now have a pro-statehood president in the White House with Joe Biden. The Senate will be in Democratic hands, as soon as the two Democratic victories in Georgia are certified (within the next two weeks).
Doug Jones is gone, a victim of his state’s rabid conservatism. So that leaves two questions:
1. Will Democrats get rid of the filibuster? D.C. statehood isn’t getting 60 votes.
2. Would anyone in the Democratic caucus oppose statehood? Democrats couldn’t suffer any defections.
Starting with the second question first, West Virginia’s conservative Democratic senator shocked the political world by leaving the door open to D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood. Well, he might’ve shocked the political world if we weren’t in the middle of an insurrection, but it was still dramatic news. Speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN, Manchin said he was open to adding two states to the country.
Tapper: Statehood for Washington D.C.?
Manchin: I don’t know enough about that yet. I want to see the pros and cons, so I’m waiting to see all the facts. I’m open up to see everything.
Tapper: Statehood for Puerto Rico?
Manchin: Same thing.
While I couldn’t find anything concrete from Sinema or King, Manchin would likely be the hardest get. Sinema has been a political chameleon, morphing from a liberal state legislator to a conservative U.S. senator, doing what she needed to do to win her statewide race. However, the state is shifting rapidly. Remember, Joe Biden won it by adding 500,000 new Democratic votes compared to 2016—a 43% increase in just four years. Democrat Mark Kelly won the state’s second Senate seat on an unapologetically liberal platform. Sinema has room to maneuver.
As for King? The independent senator from Maine can be quirky, but would he really stand in the way of statehood as the deciding “no” vote?
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the chances of getting any “yes” votes are almost zero, but everyone’s eyes would be on Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Ideologically, she has a foot planted on the Democratic side, and while she recently claimed that she isn’t pondering a party change, politicians often change their minds (gasp!). She certainly laid the foundation by saying, “If the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”
Spoiler alert—the Republican Party is nothing more than the party of Trump. And that party is gunning for her. Trump himself tweeted last year, “Few people know where they’ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski.”
In 2016, she lost the Republican primary and won the general election as a write-in independent—with Democratic votes. She won't even have to worry about primaries in 2022. Alaska changed its election system to a top-four runoff, meaning that the top four candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election, further insulating her from electoral danger if she goes independent.
But consider that a long shot. If Manchin can be convinced, we would very likely have the necessary votes … but only if the filibuster is gone.
Manchin was very clear in that same interview with Jake Tapper that he was a “no” on eliminating the filibuster. However, it’s also clear that absolutely nothing will happen in the Senate without the end of the filibuster, and Biden himself will be anxious to see progress on his legislative agenda, and won’t want to see it dead in the Senate.
Still, we need 51 votes to get rid of the filibuster, and without Manchin, we’re stuck. So what then? Do we have to wait until 2022 and hope that Democrats don’t suffer the dreaded curse of a new president’s first midterm elections? (In short, the incumbent party almost always gets walloped.) Unfortunately, that may be the case. (And to be clear, Manchin isn’t the only Democrat to express reluctance at eliminating the filibuster.)
The irony, of course, is that Manchin would have more power in a filibuster-free Senate, than one in which he doesn’t get to play kingmaker on every single vote. Perhaps that, plus pressure from Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer might lead to a reassessment.
But all that said, Manchin’s openness to D.C. statehood (and Puerto Rico too, though that’s a whole different conversation) is noteworthy, and gets us one baby step closer to enfranchising hundreds of thousands of Americans, while also slightly correcting the Senate’s rank bias toward small, rural, and white states.