D.C. leaders lean too far left even for some Democrats

A lurch to the left in recent months by the District of Columbia’s local leaders — on issues such as crime, policing, voting rights and reparations proposals — has even some Democrats on Capitol Hill wondering whether the city has gone too far.

D.C. politicians are scrambling to shore up support among their Democratic Party allies in Congress ahead of a likely vote next week in the Senate on an overhaul of the city’s criminal code. The measure has been approved by the D.C. Council but is criticized by Republicans as being “soft on crime.”

A Republican-authored bill would block the changes to the local criminal code, which would reduce penalties for some violent crimes. Sen. Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, has said he plans to join Republicans in voting against the District’s changes.

The White House could bail out the District with a veto of the Republican disapproval measure, but a last-minute save from a reelection-minded President Biden is no guarantee.

Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat facing voters next year in conservative-leaning Montana, hasn’t said how he will vote. He was noncommittal when asked about the District’s massive code rewrite.

“I hate to be a cop-out for you guys all the time, but I do have to look at it. I just don’t know what it does yet,” Mr. Tester told CNN on Tuesday. “There is the issue of, you know, D.C. does what D.C. wants to do and let D.C. do what they do, but we do have some oversight.”

Three other Democrats — Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gary C. Peters of Michigan and Sherrod Brown of Ohio — told CNN that they hadn’t made up their minds. Mr. Brown is also on the ballot next year.

With the absence of Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is on medical leave, the defection of Mr. Manchin could be enough to scuttle the District’s overhaul. 

“I don’t support it. I mean, I want to put people away. I don’t want to let them out,” Mr. Manchin told CNN on Monday. “I haven’t been briefed on it, but what I know about it, I would vote to rescind it.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser demurred Wednesday when asked whether she would support the idea of Mr. Biden vetoing the Republican disapproval measure.

“I expect all national Democrats are looking at this closely and are making a calculus on what’s best for the party,” she said. She added that she continued to be in contact with the White House on the issue.

The Constitution gives Congress the final say over the District’s laws during a review period. The only formal action Congress can take during the review period — which lasts 30 days for most laws and 60 days for laws involving crime and public safety — is voting to disapprove of the District’s new law.

To take effect, the disapproval resolution needs the support of the House and Senate and the signature of the president. If it succeeds, it can overturn D.C. law. That has happened only three times in the city’s history, and never on something as significant as the criminal code.

Bipartisan support for the disapproval resolution took on added weight when one representative got firsthand experience with crime in the District.

Angie Craig, Minnesota Democrat, was assaulted by a man inside an elevator at her D.C. condo building last month. She was one of the 31 Democrats who voted with Republicans in disapproval of the rewritten code just hours after the attack.

“It turns out the congresswoman’s attacker had been arrested and convicted no fewer than 12 times before — most recently for assaulting a Metropolitan Police officer,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said in a recent floor speech. “But there he was, this career criminal, just roaming the streets.”

The broader issue of D.C. statehood also is looming.

Republicans see the debate over crime and policing as a way of introducing voters nationwide to some of the liberal policies the District is championing, such as voting rights for noncitizens and an effort to pay reparations to Black residents.

For Republicans, granting statehood to a left-wing city that is supposed to represent the whole of the American people undermines the District’s argument for total self-governance.

Democrats, on the other hand, see a clear political benefit in making the District the 51st state. More than 75% of all registered voters and virtually all elected officials in the city identify as Democrats.

The District’s new rule allowing noncitizens to vote was even less popular with House Democrats, 42 of whom voted to disapprove of the measure on the same day as the criminal code vote.

After reports that the law had taken effect at the end of the congressional review period, a spokeswoman for Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting member of Congress, clarified that the review period for the Senate is active until March 14.

The law originally set out to allow green card holders and those with temporary protected status to vote in mayoral, council and attorney general elections. Eric Goulet, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education, told The Washington Times that Ward 6 representative Charles Allen added the contentious inclusion of illegal immigrants during committee hearings over the summer.

“To imperil the chances of congressional Democrats in swing states [by] potentially forcing them to pick between voting to support the District or voting to support their own electoral chances on this, I think it’s just a really unfair position that we’ve put them in,” Mr. Goulet told The Times. “Even the president has to decide whether he’s willing to take a political hit to support D.C. on this effort or whether or not he’s going to just let it go.”

D.C. leaders haven’t called for a change in legislative strategy.

At-large council member Kenyan McDuffie reintroduced a bill Monday that would establish a reparations fund for the city’s Black residents who were directly affected by slavery, Jim Crow laws and institutional racism, according to DCist.

The bill was first introduced in 2020 but never made it to a vote during the legislative session. It calls for the creation of a nine-member task force no later than June 2024 and a report on reparations recommendations a year after that.

Money for the fund would come from the District’s annual sales tax and from fines issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Reparations proposals have become popular in some of the nation’s most liberal circles. A San Francisco committee on reparations has suggested that the city pay as much as $5 million to Blacks impacted by slavery.

Boston; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Asheville, North Carolina, also have established committees to assess the feasibility of paying reparations.

D.C. leaders have reframed the congressional oversight fight over the criminal code as an attack on the city’s self-governance.

Ms. Bowser, the entire D.C. Council and Attorney General Brian Schwalb sent letters last week calling on the Senate to reject the disapproval resolution on grounds that it was silencing the voices of the city’s residents.

“If any of the 50 states enacts a law that does not please Congress, that state is not stripped of its autonomy,” Vincent Gray, the Ward 7 representative on the D.C. Council, told The Washington Times in a statement. “Our pursuit of statehood should not be linked to a local law that is out of fashion with Congressional leadership.”

Mr. Gray, a former D.C. mayor, and Ms. Bowser have tried to cool some of the anti-policing sentiment that fueled the criminal code overhaul and consequential reductions to the city’s police force.

Mr. Gray introduced legislation last week that called for more than 800 officers to be added to the city’s Metropolitan Police Department. The mayor’s office applauded the move.

Ms. Bowser proposed an amended code with harsher penalties last month, weeks after the D.C. Council, including Mr. Gray, overrode her veto of the original rewrite in January that invited congressional objections.

Other figures in local politics said the District’s headaches with Congress were easy to predict.

“We should have seen this coming,” Michael D. Brown, one of the District’s two elected shadow senators, told The Times. “We know that the way Congress deals with the District Columbia is wrong … but we have to take it into account when we do things. It’s just our reality.”

Mr. Brown, an unpaid, nonvoting representative in the Senate, said it’s the first time in years that the statehood movement has lost momentum.

“It appears to be pushing momentum in the other direction,” he said. “We certainly don’t know that for a fact, but it certainly looks like it may very well do that.”