Congressman Dusty Johnson is participating in his party’s ongoing drive to dilute the vote of non-Republicans and rig elections in the dwindling white majority’s favor. Johnson is recycling a recurring Republican proposal to retrocede most of the District of Columbia to the state of Maryland.
Congressman Johnson cloaks this electoral trick as an enfranchising compromise:
My bill, the D.C.-Maryland Reunion Act, would merge the suburbs of D.C. with the surrounding state of Maryland – providing congressional representation to those residents without adding a 51st state. The Capitol building and White House “mall” area would remain the District of Columbia and there would no longer be a need for electoral votes in the district since residents would become Maryland voters.
The idea has gotten some pushback from politicians in favor of D.C. statehood. But if we’re being honest, if this idea wasn’t about power and truly focused on providing representation to voters, then those same politicians would support my bill [Rep. Dusty Johnson, weekly column, 2021.01.29].
Don’t be fooled by Dusty’s smiling pitch: his proposal is all about power. Johnson’s DC retrocession would erase three reliable Electoral College votes from the Democratic column as surely as retroceding South Dakota to North Dakota would erase three reliable Electoral College votes for Republicans. Far from providing more representation, diluting DC’s vote in Maryland’s Congressional districts instead of giving DC their own Representative and two Senators is gerrymandering that would keep black folks underrepresented:
Statehood for D.C. would be a tangible way to fulfill the promise that Joe Biden made to Black Americans on the night he declared victory in the 2020 presidential election: “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” American democracy systematically overrepresents White voters at the expense of Black voters and other voters of color. The practice of according two senators to each state increases the power of the least populous places, which tend to be more White than the United States as a whole. David Leonhardt of the New York Times has calculated that the average Black voter has only 75 percent of the voting power in the Senate allotted to the average White one, and the average Hispanic voter has even less influence. The addition of two senators from D.C. — which would be the only state in the union where Black residents formed the largest racial or ethnic group — would go a small but significant way toward correcting this imbalance [Nora Caplan-Bricker, “Is D.C. Finally on the Brink of Statehood?” Washington Post Magazine, 2021.01.27].
Johnson is also contravening the will of the voters who claims to be helping. D.C. residents overwhelmingly want statehood. According to a 2019 poll, 51% of Marylanders support statehood for their federal neighbors and 57% oppose forcing D.C. into their state. That result is consistent with past polls finding Marylanders tilt against the idea of absorbing D.C.
You don’t enfranchise people by giving them the opposite of what they want. The people of the District of Columbia have as just a claim to statehood as the smaller populations of Vermont and Wyoming. If Dusty really wanted compromise, he’d meet me halfway and support adding just two more states, the Douglas Commonwealth and Puerto Rico, so we Democrats don’t turn the tables and carve D.C. into 127 states.
I guess Dusty forgets that Dakota Territory was split into North and South to provide 4 repub senators instead of two. Some people refer to that as “selective memory”. I refer to them as hypocrites with no shame. As a freshman rep, he should be aware that he could be used as a lacky for legislation that goes nowhere.
Cibvet, historians would disagree with your assessment:
https://time.com/4377423/dakota-north-south-history-two/
Perhaps ironically, DCVote laid out a comprehensive argument for why retrocession to Maryland was the right way forward: https://www.dcvote.org/news/farewell-dc-welcome-free-state-if-washington-joined-maryland-everyone-would-come-out-ahe
Within that article is the tacit acknowledgement that Maryland and DC are inextricably linked due to commuter patterns. Maryland would get an additional seat in Congress, though there wouldn’t be any more senators.
Well..I hate to point this out, but our Representative has betrayed the faults of a South Dakota education. We don’t seem to be sharpening up young minds with the required geography, history, government and Civics.
Dusty’s latest bill moves 692,683 residents of the City of Washington DC, the District of Columbia, into the state of Maryland. In doing so our beknighted and geographically confused Congressman alleges that there exist “suburbs” in the District of Columbia and by that he seems to mean the residences where the 693 thousand residents reside, which is commonly known as the City of Washington but which is referred to by natives as “the District” The suburbs of the District are already in Maryland (Montgomery County), Virginia (Arlington, Alexandria) and in fact sprawl all the way out to West Virginia, its a big Metro Area.What Dusty proposes is akin to having all of Pierre, with the exception of the Capital, the buildings up Hilger Gulch the Anderson, Foss and DCI buildings , Capitol Lake and the Governors Mansion (such as it is) attach itself to Ft. Pierre. Even though there’s nothing in the world like a Saturday night at the HopScotch, I believe the residents of Pierre would rather remain as an independent government entity. Dusty should probably take a stroll to downtown Washington DC and ask the folks who live there what they think of his proposal. I am coming to the opinion that our Congressman from South Dakota has his hands full trying to represent 884,000 of his friends and neighbors. He need not be concerned about 692,000 residents of Washington DC who have been disenfranchised throughout our nation’s history. I suggest Dusty talk to a few Washingtonians before he dusts of his trusty copy of “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” And Dusty, there are no suburbs within the District of Columbia
wayne—If you were to read your own cited articles without your republicanism glasses, its always about politics, but who am I to try to inform the so called educated followers of trump.
Racist Dusty Johnson.
Erasing 3 electoral votes for DC.
Replace him.
Cibvet, you mistake me for a Trump supporter because I am conservative. Not all rectangles are squares.
My point to you is you’re painting with too broad a brush, and your canvas is too small for it.
The link I provided about the history of the Dakatoas provides refutation that our motives were all about having more Republican senators, and much more about local / regional political strife. If you want to convince me otherwise, please provide sources.
Who in South Dakota asked sole Representative Johnson to do this? Goodness sakes he cannot do a sensible job for SD, but wants to impress somebody by oppressing the black voters out east. Gutter polities in the cloak of “for their own good go I”.
The history of Virginia, West Virginia, and Abraham Lincoln should be included in this discussion.
QAnon Dustin Johnson voted NO on removing Marjorie Taylor green from Hoise Committees.
Of course Reps. Will not discipline any members.
R Party owns it. They are the QANON Party now.
Retire Johnson forever in 2022.