Elections
Today in Anti-Muslim Party Politics: Dutch Edition
originally posted by Michelle Chen for RaceWire [click here]
Jun 10th
With the Tea Party making inroads in primaries across the country, you might think the rabid outbursts and vapid sloganeering are a peculiarly American phenomenon. But in fact, Thursday’s elections in the Netherlands show that the U.S. has no monopoly on right-wing anger.
The far-right Party for Freedom (it’s got a familiar ring to it, no?), led by anti-Muslim zealot Geert Wilders, has run on a platform of zero tolerance for the country’s burgeoning Muslim population. In Thursday’s elections, the party won 24 seats out of 150, nearly doubling its standing in Parliament. Many were surprised to see that a country known for its liberal culture and social policy has done a 180 at the polls, making a hard-right faction the third-ranking party in the government, behind the Liberal (VVD) and Labour (PvdA) parties.
Wilders–who is facing criminal charges of inciting racial hatred and was refused entry to the United Kingdom due to his anti-Islamic propagandandizing–is now emboldened to continue pushing his agenda of eradicating Islam from the Dutch public arena. His major initiative is a ban on the immigration of Muslims.
Wilders outlined his rationale to RT.com in March:
“The majority of Muslims in our Western societies are law-abiding people like you and me,” Wilders said. “Still, I want to stop the immigration of people from the Islamic countries because they still bring a lot of culture that is not ours. Look at all the countries for instance in the Middle East where Islam is dominant – you see no rule of law, no functioning parliament, no civil society.”
To deal with Muslims already living in the Netherlands, Wilders wants to stamp out new construction of Mosques and ban Muslim women from wearing a veil in public. Unfortunately, his racism isn’t even original; similar anti-veil crackdowns have emerged in France and Belgium as well.
Muslims, most of them of Turkish and Moroccan descent, currently make up about 6.5 percent of the national population of 16.5 million. The large size of the community helps explain why the white Dutch public might feel anxious about the growing Muslim presence in the Netherlands. But it also underscores how a supposedly “tolerant” country has failed to live up to principles of pluralism and cultural openness at a time when social inclusion is more crucial than ever.
As economic anxieties mesh with underlying xenophobia across Europe, Wilders may see his party as the vanguard of a right-wing resurgence. In fact, he has expressed eagerness to use his criminal trial to “expose” Islam to the public and present evidence that the religion poses a social threat. Whatever he reveals in court, Wilders has already exposed plenty about the roots of his country’s political confusion. When compared with the conservative backlash in the U.S., the shift in Dutch politics show that the vilification of Islam and immigrants has little to do with preserving any country’s unique “values” or “identity.” It has a lot more to do with the public’s generalized sense of insecurity and frustration, which quickly shades into hostility toward anything, and anyone, representing change.
Photo: Getty Images/Dan Kitwood
Tea Party Fave Nikki Haley Not White Enough, After All
Jun 4th
South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts has served up the latest in what will certainly be a rising chorus of racist gaffes as the campaign season heats up. Knotts guffawed on a political talk show that both President Obama and Tea Party-backed gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley are “ragheads.” AP quotes Knotts saying: “We’ve already got a raghead in the White House, we don’t need another raghead in the governor’s mansion.” (Via HuffPo)
Haley was already fighting allegations that she’s a tramp (that’s the long and short of speculation over whether she’s had extramarital affairs). Now Knotts and others on the right are fretting over her Sikh heritage. Haley appears to be fretting over it as well, having set up an Obama-style “truth” section on her Website in which she reassures everyone she’s now deeply, truly Christian.
For his part, Knotts insists he was telling a joke that would not offend if we all heard it in context. He’s at least right that the broader context matters more than either his quip or himself. Knotts will not be the last partisan combatant to step in it this political season while questioning someone’s whiteness bona fides. Not everyone can be as subtle as Sarah Palin’s 2008 “real Americans” refrain.
Salon’s Gabriel Winant advances the coming trend with an essay worth reading today. Winant says beware the debate over whether Knotts and his ilk are racists, foolish or both. The point is that xenophobia is the connective tissue of today’s conservative movement. An extended snip after the jump:
Racism is, in this way, in the bones of the modern conservative movement. What we’ve seen in Knotts’ comment is a little corner of an x-ray. Through the second half of the 20th century, anticommunism was what gave structure to otherwise disparate elements of conservatism — the libertarians, the social conservatives, the nationalist war hawks. The War on Terror has had to tag in for the Cold War. Many of the trappings are the same: the paranoia about sleeper agents and Manchurian candidates within our own ranks certainly rings a bell. But the core of conservative animus and belligerence here is a belief in an irrevocable clash of civilizations that has been going on for centuries, and picks up on much of the legacy of Jim Crow-type racial conservatism.
[snip]
This isn’t to say that Mark Steyn and Bill Kristol have Klan hoods in their closets. I’m sure they think of themselves racial egalitarians and color-blind. (Well, I’m sure Kristol does, anyway.) Even Jake Knotts probably does. But they can’t defend the things that matter to them without racism.
Photo: Renée Ittner-McManus
How Artur Davis Voted While Vying to be Ala.’s 1st Black Gov.
Jun 1st
If Congressman Artur Davis wins in today’s Alabama primary, he’ll make history becoming the first Black Democratic nominee for governor in a state where George Wallace declared “segregation forever.”
But it might not be the victory we were waiting for.
Davis’s voting record in Congress indicates that he’s pro-public housing, pro-children’s health, pro-Black farmers, but also anti-abortion, anti-gays, and yes even anti-health care reform. On immigration, he’s mixed, supporting local enforcement of immigration laws but voting at least once against more funding for border security. In short, it’s pretty much what you’d expect of a man running for governor in the Deep South.
Davis, who’s represented Alabama’s 7th District since 2003, voted against national health care reform in March, telling reporters at the time that health care could be fixed “without having to do a massive systems overhaul.” Months earlier, he’d voted for the Stupak amendment to the health care bill, which would have banned the use of federal dollars for abortion.
Critics contend that Davis’s vote against health care was him laying the groundwork to get the support of white voters in Alabama today. Davis has also skipped seeking the support of the state’s civil rights organizations in the primary race, saying he’s going straight to the voters.
Maybe he had his white voters in mind last Friday when he failed to show up for the important House vote to repeal the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy—which disproportionately impacts people of color serving in the military.
Davis let folks know that if he had been there, he would have voted against the measure because according to his spokesperson, “he believes the Pentagon should be allowed to resolve the issue without congressional intervention.”
This wasn’t a surprise. In 2007, Davis voted against a federal bill that would have made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. And in 2006, he voted for a bill that would have amended the U.S. Constitution to declare that marriage is between a man and a woman.
On immigration, he voted against a 2004 bill that would have banned federal dollars for hospitals providing emergency care to undocumented immigrants, but two years later he voted for a bill giving local and state cops the right to detain people suspected of being undocumented and turn them over to the feds.
On abortion, Davis has been mostly bad news.
When he arrived in Congress back in 2003, Davis voted for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which bans a form of late-term abortion, and he’s also voted for a bill making it illegal to transport a teenager across state lines to end a pregnancy and avoid parental consent forms. On the flip side—and in line with his support for the military—Davis voted yes on a 2005 amendment to a defense bill that would have made it legal for servicewomen to get abortions at military health care facilities. The amendment was later defeated.
So what’s the good news?
Davis has voted to extend unemployment insurance, to regulate the banking industry, and to give judges power over modifying mortgages. He also played a key role in reopening the Pigford settlement, making it possible for Black formers to get redress after decades of racism at the hands of the USDA. Jessica Hoffman reported on the plight of Black farmers in 2009 for ColorLines.
During the last Bush administration, Davis also came out forcefully for public housing, helping to keep funding for it in the federal budget, and in 2007, he voted to expand CHIP, the health insurance program for kids.
Davis is running in today’s primary against Ron Sparks, the state agriculture commissioner who’s white and has the backing of the old civil rights organizations Davis dissed in this campaign. Rep. John Lewis from Georgia though has thrown his support behind Davis along with the mayors of Selma and Mobile.
But even if he wins today, Davis will face an uphill battle against Republicans who are also picking their nominee from a pool of seven, including real estate developer Tim James. James made national headlines with his call for an English-only driver’s license exam.
Polls in Alabama close at 7 p.m. tonight.
1,200 National Guard Troops to the Border: A Bargaining Chip or More Political Pandering?
May 26th
Yesterday, President Obama met with Senate Republicans to discuss, among other things, moving forward with comprehensive immigration reform. But what came out of the meeting was a letter to Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, requesting 1,200 troops to be sent to the U.S.-Mexican border and a $500 million request for additional border personnel and technology as part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill. While the President’s intentions to address the real sources of violence and crime along the border—that is, drug cartels and gun traffickers, not immigrants—is duly noted, the President is being perceived as piling enforcement on enforcement and pandering to Republicans with no real forward movement on reform.
Following the meeting, President Obama was widely criticized from all sides. Immigration advocates and Senate Democrats were quick to jump on the President for kowtowing to Republicans without getting much in return while border-frenzied Republicans and restrictionists remarked that the President wasn’t doing enough.
According to Frank Sharry of America’s Voice, President Obama is letting Republicans control the conversation:
Giving in … on immigration sure has the same feel as when the administration caved and excluded unauthorized immigrants from the health care exchange following Rep. Joe Wilson’s [R-S.C.] rude outburst last year. It has the feel of the president’s recent embrace of offshore drilling, just weeks before the BP disaster struck … Give them what they want and hope they’ll play nice.
Similarly, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) criticized the “Obama administration’s militarization of the border” as “submission to the political forces brought by the Republican Party.”
Meanwhile, Senator John McCain (whose recent 180 on immigration reform is chalked up to his senate battle with restrictionist J.D. Hayworth) complained that 1,200 troops were “simply not enough. We need 6,000.” In 2006, President Bush sent 6,000 National Guard members to the border to “step up security while the Border Patrol expanded its ranks,” but they were later withdrawn.
While President Obama acknowledged that an immigration overhaul is needed to fully address border issues, there wasn’t any movement on the reform front. Enforcement alone has never been a solution to our immigration problems. Throwing more money at the problem as the sole means of solving it is not only fiscally irresponsible, but also ineffective. Over the last two decades, the United States has spent billions of dollars on border enforcement while the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has roughly tripled from 1990 to 2008, from 3.5 million to 11.9 million.
So, if the President is using border enforcement as a bargaining chip for reform, just what exactly is he getting in return? Without a solid push from the White House or Republican sign-on, the President seems to be sending the message that “borders first” is his number one immigration priority. After years of failed “borders first” strategies, many Americans—especially Latino voters—are wondering just when the federal government is going to take that crucial second step.
Photo by The National Guard.
Riding the Anti-Immigration Wave: The Short- and Long-Term Political Implications
May 25th
Despite the mounting pressure (boycotts, legal challenges, protests) to repeal Arizona’s enforcement law (SB 1070), polls indicate that the majority of Americans support the law by almost two to one—and, at last count, as many as 17 other states are considering similar legislation. However, while it may seem advantageous for some in the GOP to use this anti-immigrant wave as political momentum for re-election, the long-term political impact may be larger and more harmful than they realize. Can the Republican Party (once the ‘Party of No,” then the “Party of Hell No” and now the “Party of Papers Please?”) really afford to further alienate the fastest-growing U.S. voting bloc—Latinos?
In a recent New York Times letter, the author draws a comparison between the Arizona’s enforcement law (SB 1070) and California’s 1994 anti-immigrant Proposition 187 (which was later found to be unconstitutional). Then Governor Pete Wilson supported Prop 187, which denied children of undocumented immigrants state-funded education and health programs. The author points out that California has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, and that Republicans won California in six of the previous seven presidential contests prior to 1992, and five of the seven most recent gubernatorial races. Coincidence?
“There are a lot of similarities between what’s happening in Arizona and what happened in California in 1994,” said Sergio Bendixen, a political pollster and consultant specializing in the Hispanic vote. “That made California a deep blue state,” or Democratic, “and Republicans are making the same mistake now trying to benefit on anti-immigration.”
It doesn’t take a political scientist or a pollster to understand what happens when you alienate such a large and growing swathe of the American electorate. Latinos—who not surprisingly oppose Arizona’s law (70% opposing, 27% supporting)—made up 7.4% of the electorate in 2008, which has roughly double in the last 20 years, and is expected to continue to grow.
The letter continues:
There is widespread resentment among Latinos that they will be singled out as a result of this law, despite the insistence of Arizona officials that racial profiling is impermissible … Previous and earlier surveys by Mr. Bendixen, the pollster, show that almost two in three Latino voters have either a family member or friend who is an undocumented worker …He says Hispanics resent the suggestion that immigrants are more prone to criminality, an allegation that is contradicted by the vast majority of academic studies and statistics.
Recent evidence of the Latino vote can be seen in places like Colorado, where Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet pulled ahead of GOP hopeful Jane Norton. According to Public Policy Polling, the shift is due to Hispanic voters:
Bennet went from leading Norton by 12 points with Hispanic voters to a 21 point advantage. That large shift in a Democratic direction among Hispanics mirrors what we saw in our Arizona Senate polling last month- Rodney Glassman went from trailing John McCain by 17 points with them in September to now holding a 17 point lead.
While Latinos’ cultural conservatism may overlap with Republicans’, it’s not likely that Latinos will forget 1) the Tea Party/Republican anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding SB 1070; and 2) SB 1070 itself as well as ensuing copycat legislation. So, even though Republicans candidates who endorse SB 1070 (and similar legislation) might garner electoral support in the short-term, riding the anti-immigrant wave will more than likely drown them, and some in the Republican Party, out in the long-term.
Photo by Phil Gibbs.
Rand Paul Hates Institutional Racism (Except the Part Where You Elect Him)
May 20th
Earlier this week, Rand Paul, noted libertarian son of noted libertarian Ron Paul, was doing great. He had harnessed the support of the Tea Party and the mainstream GOP, overcome gloomy initial polling numbers, and seized Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary vote by a wide margin. Paul then ran a victory lap on NPR… where he came out against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act, because they give too much control to the federal government, instead of letting states and corporations end discrimination when it’s profitable for them to do so. Liberty!
He then went on Rachel Maddow’s show, where he was given twenty minutes of rope to do with as he pleased. You can watch his knot-tying skills above — the meaty stuff’s at 14:00, and Dave Weigel’s got a transcript. Liberty!
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Paul’s particular style of protecting liberties excludes those whose liberties actually need protecting. He’s fine with unchecked government control of women’s bodies, gay couples’ relationships, and immigrants’ lives. Credit where credit’s due, he’s against the PATRIOT Act — but he’s fine with Gitmo, torture, and other lapses in due process. In other words? He’s espousing Republican ideals.
And his stance on the Civil Rights Act, that Title II anti-discrimination regulation of private businesses is unwarranted and that the free market will correct itself against racism, makes sense on paper. It assumes that people will do the right thing and not be racist, either as business owners or consumers. And when Paul says that he would have marched alongside Dr. King — sure. I don’t think the black-communist-in-the-White-House rhetoric of many of his followers is necessarily any reflection on his own beliefs.
The problems? Lunch counters didn’t desegregate on their own, and many of his followers really are racists who like what they see in him. By advocating the logical conclusion of conservatism, Rand Paul is registering wrongness at Arizonan levels.
Besides, institutional racism and systemic racism, the very things that Rand Paul rails against but refuses to use the government to fight, doesn’t need racists to keep going. The disparity’s baked into the system itself. If Paul knew his issues, he might realize this; as it is, he’ll only perpetuate the problems he says he’d march against.
For example, here’s his big idea on solving the unemployment crisis, which, sadly, was probably not initially drafted as part of a high school civics class assignment:
But also maybe welfare should have a local person, a man or woman who sits down across the counter from them and says “What are you doing to find work?” and gives them some tough love and says “Go to work!” It can work, you know. We’ve tried the other way, just coddling people and giving people everything. Why don’t we try just getting them to work?
As anyone who actually knows this issue can tell you, the post-Reagan-Clinton safety net is simultaneously draconian and ineffective, and perpetuates the raced economic gap it claims to fight. And Kentucky TANF is seventh lowest in the country. As the American Prospect’s Paul Waldman puts it, “Just think of that Kentucky TANF recipient, living large on her $3,144 a year, saying ‘I don’t need to work — as long as I’ve got welfare!’ Someone really needs to tell her to get a job.”
In the same interview, he invokes the Trail of Tears while proposing a year-long Kentucky tax holiday, deepening the impression that he just hasn’t given the issue much thought but is happy to discuss his ideas on it anyway. Someone should ask him about redlining.
Ultimately, calling Rand a racist takes the blame off of where it belongs — conservative ideology’s refusal to grow up and come to terms with the 20th century. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’s just incurious, rather than actively malicious, when it comes to the issues facing his constituency and the history of his own states’-rights movement. I’m not sure if that’s any better. We’ll find out on Election Day which liberties Kentucky voters prioritize — their liberty to live free, or Wal-Mart’s and Wells Fargo’s liberty to deprive Kentuckians of their liberties.
2010 Congressional Primaries, Immigration and an Appetite for Change
May 19th
As the dust is settling from yesterday’s primary elections, many politicians and pundits will try to interpret what the American public is thinking. The reactions and responses are likely to span the ideological and political scales. Whether Democrats aren’t Democratic enough, or Republicans aren’t Republican enough, or seats held by one party should be replaced by the other, one thing is clear: Americans are frustrated with their current leaders and want new representation.
Immigrant advocates will be asking themselves what role immigration played in the primaries. The fact is that the immigration issue probably played a small role, if any, in Tuesday’s elections. Quite frankly, Members don’t have much of a record on the issue for voters to base their votes on because Congress has been too scared to take on the issue and see what their constituents say about it. But the sentiments behind the immigration debate echo what we saw in the polls—the public has grown tired with inaction.
Americans are fed up—regardless of what party they affiliate with. They see the country going to hell in a hand basket and no one is doing anything about it. Other than health care, it is hard to name a single other legislative initiative from the past year. The extended and vicious health care debate deflated many hopes of Congress working together to solve any of the other real problems experienced by Americans. Rather than working together, members from both parties—as well as pundits—seem to take any opportunity to stake out their ground and distance themselves from those deemed their opposition. From oil spills to financial regulation to Supreme Court nominations, the conversation is one of political positioning rather than problem-solving.
Immigration is no different. Americans agree that the immigration system is broken and something must be done about it. For the last several years Congress has failed come up with a solution, despite the evidence that this is an important issue to their constituencies. The 2006 and 2007 battles over comprehensive immigration reform were nasty and divisive. Because Congress hasn’t acted and the problem isn’t resolving itself, some states and localities have taken action—some out of a genuine desire to fix the problem, and others to score political points. The newly passed law in Arizona and the various copycats are evidence that the states are not backing down.
Whether Republican or Democrat or Independent, Americans are frustrated with Washington’s unwillingness and inability to advance a real conversation on immigration reform. Like many of the other issues facing us today, immigration is very complex and requires an honest, thoughtful debate rather than name-calling, playing politics, and demagoguery. Let’s hope that yesterday’s elections sent the message that Americans want real action.
Photo by Marc Dietrich.
D.C. Voting Rights Go Back in the Dead Letter Bin
Apr 21st
The DC Voting Rights Bill that was expected to reach the House this week has been pulled from this session’s legislative calendar entirely, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Washington Post yesterday.
Tensions between Congress and the District’s City Council have been rising ever since the Senate’s version of the DC Voting Rights Act passed with a dubious amendment that, if enacted, would override all of the city’s efforts to enforce gun control policies. After blockading the bill in the House for a year, D.C.’s nonvoting representative, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, said in a statement last week that she and the City Council would reluctantly endorse the bill — conceding defeat to the gun lobby, Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in order to finally secure a vote for DC’s residents. The District has been unrepresented in Congress since the city was established as a federal territory in 1801.
But Norton said she and Democratic leadership were “shocked” to learn the gun lobby now wants even stronger language in the House version of the bill. “The existing Senate gun bill eliminated important gun safety laws in the District, but the changes in the House gun bill would directly proliferate guns throughout the District,” Norton said in a statement yesterday.
Among the changes proposed by Reps. Mark Sounder (R-Ind.) and Travis Childers (D-Miss.) — changes Norton calls “NRA-drafted” — are measures that would greatly diminish the D.C. police chief’s right to deny concealed-carry licenses and that would potentially allow semiautomatic weapons in schools and other buildings that don’t have elaborate security measures, like metal detectors and biometric screening devices in place to identify those with criminal intent.
D.C. councilmembers were preparing to take up a resolution vowing not to adopt the gun-law changes if the bill passed. They weren’t alone in their distaste for the bill. While the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the National Urban League supported Holmes’ strategy of getting legislation through the House and then changing the language, the gun amendment prompted the League of Women Voters and DC for Democracy to hold off on supporting the legislation.
Norton says she’s nonetheless hopeful that a DC Voting Rights Act will one day become law: “I am full of promising ideas about how to move forward not only on voting rights but on every right D.C. residents are entitled to as American citizens.” An optimistic thought, but with congressional redistricting based on results of the 2010 Census and upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats aren’t assured the majority in both Houses that they’re enjoying now. After years of political battles with no end in sight, it’s hard to say where it will go from here.
Photo credit: dbking.
Supporting Immigration Reform in Nevada is More Pragmatic than Political
Apr 19th
In Sunday’s local Las Vegas newspaper, the Review Journal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reiterated his support for immigration reform and pushed back on the paper’s editorial staff who have long rallied against fixing our broken immigration system. Senator Reid’s reiterated support came on the heels of a speech he gave a week earlier in Nevada where he called for immigration reform to be completed this year and a later comment stating a timeframe for moving legislation. There is, however, more to Senator Reid’s recent support for immigration reform than mere political gains.
Senator Reid wrote:
If we truly want to fix our broken immigration system, and not just score political points, we need comprehensive immigration reform that is tough on lawbreakers, fair to taxpayers and practical to implement … Immigration reform will help us safeguard the rights and wages of American workers and force unscrupulous employers to get on the right side of the law. So long as immigrants working illegally are afraid to report being underpaid, exploited and abused for fear of deportation, American workers will be undercut. We need to require these workers to apply for legal status and become hard-working taxpayers.
Also on Sunday, a poll conducted by the same newspaper cited a statistical split on the issue of whether or not likely Nevada voters supported a path towards citizenship—a split which flies in the face of said editorial staff’s characterization of immigration reform as an “unwanted reform.” Harry Reid didn’t accept the 50-50 split, noting that had the pollsters posed the question in a way that truly characterized his proposal, support would have been higher.
Semantics aside, however, why is Harry Reid rallying for immigration reform now? Is this just a ploy to excite the Democratic base in Nevada—a group he needs to turn out for him in November? Aside from the fact that Reid has always been a strong supporter of immigration reform, he is a pragmatist. He has an understanding of who his constituents are and how they can move the political dial in his state. One might even say he has a better memory than the Democratic administration who was helped over the finish line by the Latino vote last November—particularly Nevada’s Latino vote. Obama defeated McCain among Latino voters by 76% to 22% in Nevada, where 11.6% of the state’s electorate is Latino. Nevada also had one of the greatest increases in the Latino vote in 2008 growing by over 65% (or 47,000 additional voters).
Nevada is a states where the growing political and economic clout of immigrants, Latinos, and Asians is also clear as the desert sky. Immigrants now make up nearly 20% (497,821 people) of Nevada’s population, and 38% of them are naturalized U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. Immigrants and the children of immigrants now account for nearly 15% of all registered voters in the state.
From an economic standpoint, Latinos account for one-quarter of all Nevadans and wield over $14 billion in consumer purchasing power. At last count, the sales and receipts of businesses owned by Latinos and Asians totaled $3.6 billion and employed more than 25,000 people.
Harry Reid may hope that these communities turn out for him at the polls but he also knows immigrant, Latino, and Asian workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs are integral to Nevada’s economy and tax base. His position on immigration reform, however, is less political than pragmatic. He knows immigrants support job creation and are a strong part of his state’s labor force. While Reid’s supportive stance on the issues they care about is smart politics, it is also good for the long term economic recovery of his home state.
Photo by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
It’s Ballots for Bullets in D.C. This Week
Apr 19th
The taxpayers of the District of Columbia might be getting closer to representation in Congress this week—but not without caving in to the gun lobby, as both the New York Times and Washington Post pointed out in weekend editorials. The House is expected to vote this week on a bill that would give the District a voting House member, ending a long stalemate between voting rights advocates and the gun lobby.
Last year, when the Senate passed the D.C. Voting Rights Act of 2009, the pro-gun lobby, spearheaded by Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, successfully campaigned to add language to the bill that would legalize assault weapons in D.C., repeal the city’s firearms registration system and prevent the city council from passing any laws that “discourage” gun possession. The Ensign amendment was designed, in part, to stall the District’s voting-rights momentum by tying Democrats up in negotiations to eliminate the pro-gun riders — which is exactly what happened. D.C. has a Democratic majority and a population that’s over 60% people of color. Because it is not part of a state, its residents currently have only a non-voting representative in the House and no senator.
D.C.’s nonvoting representative, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, announced Thursday that she and city leaders are ready to do whatever it takes to finally give the citizens of the nation’s capital a vote in Congress—even if it means capitulating to the demands of conservatives and Blue Dog Democrats and reluctantly passing the bill with the gun amendment attached. “I have given this fight all that I had. There is nothing left to do but make the hard decision,” Holmes Norton said.
The WaPo’s editorial on Sunday offered a scathing critique of that choice and of the whole sorry episode:
The bill, if it follows provisions approved by the Senate, would remove the District’s ban on military-style weapons, repeal the city’s firearm registration system, allow teenagers to possess semiautomatic assault rifles and undermine federal anti-gun trafficking laws. In a final insult, it would prohibit local officials from passing any law that could “discourage” gun possession. This is not — as its disgraced and morally craven author, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), claims — about restoring Second Amendment rights to the District; the Supreme Court’s Heller decision took care of that. This is about undermining a community’s reasonable authority, upheld in Heller, to regulate firearms.
Republicans alone are not to blame. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) enabled — indeed, voted for — this dangerous gun measure. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) couldn’t find a way or muster the will to get their members in line. President Obama had the gall Friday to issue a lame statement urging support for voting rights, after exerting no influence whatsoever to help the District avoid this appalling choice.
The Ensign amendment is not the last hurdle, however. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who originally championed the bill in the Senate, has said he plans to filibuster it now. A compromise in the Senate version guaranteed Republican-leaning Utah a new representative, to strike a political balance. But Hatch doesn’t like that the bill creates an at-large seat in Utah; he wants a fourth district.
Photo credit: Bulldog23, Hoosier