Photo by Laura Padgett

It’s January, and for President Barack Obama, that means getting ready for his first official State of the Union address. With the large number issues that kept him busy in 2009 and the many more that loom in 2010, he’s by no means short on subject-matter to include in the speech.

But some local voting rights activists want the president to squeeze in a word or two about the District’s continued disenfranchisement. D.C. Wire reports that Ward 8 community activist Phil Pannell will introduce a resolution at this week’s meeting of the D.C. Democratic State Committee asking that Obama make mention of D.C. voting rights in his address. DC Vote has put out a similar call on their Facebook page.

The District has long had a love-hate relationship with the State of the Union. As a courtesy, the city’s mayor is usually invited to sit alongside the First Lady as a special guest. In 2007, though, Mayor Fenty bucked the tradition and attended as a guest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi instead. He said it was because she invited him first, but everyone assumed it was meant more as a snub to President Bush and his total lack of interest in advancing the cause of D.C. voting rights. (In 2006, we wondered if then Mayor Anthony Williams should have attended as Bush’s guest. He did.) There’s little doubt that Fenty will attend as Obama’s guest, both because they’re friends and because Obama has, his 2009 year of silence notwithstanding, claimed he supports D.C. voting rights and statehood.

But will Obama say anything about D.C. voting rights? The State of the Union is usually a laundry list of past achievements and promises to come, so a sentence or two about remedying the District’s 200-year-old injustice could *theoretically* make its way into the address. But Obama has said nothing about the cause when it mattered most: when legislation that would have granted the District a voting seat in the House floundered on the Hill last summer. He’s also stubbornly refused to put the city’s “Taxation without Representation” license plates on his limo. If he really supports D.C. voting rights, he’s stealthily avoided letting us know, at least since taking office.