Norton Statehood Bill Breaks Cosponsorship Record in Lead Up to D.C. Statehood-Emancipation Day Floor Speech Series, Next Week
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today announced that Norton's District of Columbia statehood bill, the New Columbia Admission Act, has set a new record of House cosponsors (113), breaking the old record set by Norton's statehood bill last Congress. As this Congress began, Norton's D.C. statehood bill set a record for original cosponsors, 93, which broke the old record of 69 set in 1987, before Norton was elected to Congress. Norton sought the new milestone the week before D.C. Emancipation Day, which commemorates April 16, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln freed 3,100 enslaved African Americans in the District. Norton uses D.C. Emancipation Day each year as a symbol and catalyst for today's D.C. residents, who, she says, "will not be free until statehood is achieved for the District of Columbia." Norton will give a series of floor speeches next week on the denial of equal rights to D.C. residents and the necessity for D.C. statehood leading up to a Special Order Hour on the House Floor on Emancipation Day (Thursday) dedicated to making the District the 51st state.
"Breaking another statehood record has a purpose at a time when Republicans control the Congress," Norton said. "This is a time for D.C. residents to regroup, build more active support in D.C. and in the nation, and signal to our opponents that momentum for statehood is unbroken. This year everything we do on D.C. Emancipation Day should reinforce this message."
Norton got the only House vote on statehood in 1993, not long after being elected to Congress. Almost two-thirds of the Democrats voted for the bill as well as one Republican, giving D.C. residents a strong start, but Democrats lost the majority in the next Congress. Since that vote, Norton, while in the minority, was able to get the D.C. House Voting Rights Act through the House in 2007 and the Senate in 2009, which would have given D.C. a voting House member, had it not been derailed by a National Rifle Association-backed amendment that would have wiped out D.C.'s gun safety laws. Last September, the Senate held its first-ever hearing and the first congressional hearing on D.C. statehood in over 20 years. In July, President Obama announced his support for D.C. statehood.