DC and Puerto Rico Statehood, Splitting Up Big States

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DC and Puerto Rico Statehood, Splitting Up Big States

It’s a mass of irony for all the world to see; it’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington, DC.
—Gil Scott Heron

The Democratic Party is facing a crisis that it’s experienced only once before in its history: the near-complete loss, for multiple generations, of control of the Senate—and thus the loss of any say in the makeup of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Within the next two decades, half of the population of the United States will live in just eight states and be represented by only 16 (out of 100) senators.37 Right now, about two-thirds of the US population lives in just 15 states, represented by only 30 senators (and thus 30 percent of the Senate).

There’s history here, and Democrats need to learn from it fast.

Generally speaking, as the country was adding new states (mostly in the 19th century), the population of a territory that wanted to become a state had to hit the threshold necessary for a single representative in the House of Representatives, which, in 1864, was 125,000 residents. Nonetheless, in 1864 during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Party (which controlled both the House and Senate at the time) brought the Nevada territory into the Union—all 7,000 residents living in Nevada. Had Nevada waited until it had enough residents to qualify for a single House seat, it wouldn’t have been admitted as a state until 1970.

But Nevada added two Republican senators, giving the GOP solid control over the Senate. In 1876, to solidify that majority, Republican president Ulysses S. Grant and his party granted Colorado—with 40,000 residents—statehood.

Republicans doubled down on the process in 1889, when they’d just ousted Democrat Grover Cleveland from the White House, and Republican president Benjamin Harrison not only admitted the Dakota Territory into the union but split it in two to produce four senators and two representatives for the GOP. (North Dakota had 36,000 residents in 1880;38 South Dakota had 98,000.39)

In roughly 40 years the GOP added eight senators, largely cementing their control of the Senate until the Republican Great Depression; from Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 until 1933, Democrats controlled the Senate for only eight years.

Democrats need to consider doing the same. There are two ways: add new states and split up some of the existing states.

Almost half of our states have fewer than four million people, 40 with 14 of them having fewer than two million, and generally the least populous states are the most rural and the most reliably Republican.

California, with about 40 million residents, could—given these numbers—split itself into 10 or more states, adding 18 or more senators (not all but most Democratic). New York, with 20 million, could easily become two (New York City and the rest of the state) or even four if the boroughs of NYC were broken out.

There is virtually no discussion of this among Democrats; it’s time to start a conversation.

Similarly, at the very least, the District of Columbia should become a state now.

“Taxation without representation” is proudly displayed on license plates of vehicles registered in Washington, DC. Ironic, considering that the city is the capital of a nation that was birthed in the colonial cries of “No taxation without representation!”

Though residents in Washington, DC, pay federal taxes and the District has more citizens than either Wyoming or Vermont, DC is not a state, has no votes in Congress, and has had only three Electoral College votes since the 1961 passage of the 23rd Amendment.

Puerto Rico is in a similar situation, although residents of the territory do not generally pay federal taxes. In a 2017 referendum, 97 percent of the island’s residents voted in favor of statehood.42

The people of both Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, want the places where they live to become states, and Republicans are terrified at the prospect because both places are overwhelmingly Democratic, which would add four Democratic senators, producing a Senate that more accurately reflected the overall American electorate.

Until Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, are admitted as states into the United States, their respective non-state statuses mean that their residents are facing a systemic form of voter suppression.