Letter to Conservative Democrats and New Members

Letter

Norton Buoyed by a Meeting with House Leadership and CBC on D.C. Voting Rights

Releases Her Letter to Conservative Democrats and New Members

House leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), and Judicial Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), met this afternoon with Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chair Barbara Lee (D-CA) and other CBC leaders, including Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and other members in Speaker Pelosi's office at a lunch meeting to discuss the next steps on the DC House Voting Rights Act.

After the meeting, Norton also released a letter she wrote to each conservative and moderate member of the House Democratic Caucus and to all new House members. "Whatever our views on other issues, civil rights has been a unifying, signature issue for Democrats," Norton wrote. "I ask you simply to repeat what virtually every Democrat did last session. Please vote for a clean rule to allow the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act to come to the floor and be considered on its own merits."

At the meeting, Speaker Pelosi emphasized her commitment to passage of the bill on its merits. Majority Leader Hoyer, who has been doing heavy lifting of this bill for the House leadership, said the bill will come to the floor as soon as we get the votes, repeating remarks made at his press briefing earlier in the day that he was, "for sooner rather than later," and that he was "working hard to make sure that it happens, and was talking to all the interested parties." Last Friday, Hoyer listed the bill for possible consideration this week. Conyers, who got the bill though his committee without any debilitating amendments last month, said that his focus was on removing the gun threat to the bill so that it can be passed without delay just as the bill passed in the House last session.

Norton said that she was "very encouraged by the extended discussion at the meeting, especially the follow-up that all agreed would be done to develop further details for moving the bill forward. At the meeting, Norton rejected the notion of either guns or voting rights as an impossible deal and one that could only lead to stalemate. "I am convinced that the conservative Democrats want to vote for this bill the same way they did last session, and some are beginning to say so in unsolicited statements. I am convinced we can do this," Norton said.

Norton's full letter follows.

Text of Norton's letter:

May I thank you again for your vote last session for the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act. I was especially proud that our Democratic Caucus supplied most of the votes for the people of the nation's capital to be represented in the "People's House," among the most basic of civil rights. Your vote for the bill was emblematic of the big tent political coalition we call the Democratic Party that originated with the administration of FDR, when Members who opposed civil rights bills and African Americans, who had been Lincoln Republicans, first came together in the same party under the New Deal. For decades, however, we have consistently overcome the old differences among Democrats on civil rights and race. Whatever our views on other issues, civil rights has been a unifying, signature issue for Democrats.

This overarching commitment was put at risk last week by the unprecedented National Rifle Association (NRA) threat to score the rule for a bipartisan bill granting a House vote for the District of Columbia and a new seat for Utah without a gun amendment. The NRA threat produced a formidable response from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the coalition of more than 200 national organizations, which announced that it would score a rule for the first time since it was established in 1950 if a gun amendment were made in order on this civil rights bill. Almost all Democrats who regularly support gun legislation also have top LCCR ratings.

Almost 35 years ago, Congress confronted a similar but even more challenging task when it granted District of Columbia residents their first civic rights as American citizens, by granting them partial home rule and a House delegate. Some in our own party had blocked home rule and a delegate for the residents of the nation's capital for 150 years because of the minority of District residents who were African Americans. Ironically, a Democratic Congress gave D.C. residents these rights only when the city became a majority African-American jurisdiction and the national civil rights movement came to the District.

The consistent support of our Democratic Caucus for equal rights, regardless of our differences on other issues, has been so strong for so long that I have no doubt we can remain a unified party on civil rights and avoid an unprecedented split in our ranks on this civil rights bill. I ask you simply to repeat what virtually every Democrat did last session. Please vote for a clean rule to allow the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act to come to the floor and be considered on its own merits.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Holmes Norton

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