It’s Primary Day, the day when District residents — well, mostly Democrats — get out to the polls and exercise their right to suffrage. So on a day when the ballot is king, who better to talk to than a person who has done more to fight for voting rights in the District of Columbia than anyone — Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. The Delegate took the time to answer a few of our questions about the city, her reelection campaign, the mayoral campaign’s racial divide and its effect on the city’s future, parks, budget autonomy, and, of course, her continuing struggle in Congress to make the District’s general elections in November more than a simple coronation of the already-elected Mayor or Council Chair.

Let’s start with your reelection campaign: you have had massive support at straw polls, you’ve been endorsed by pretty much every media outlet and appear to be coasting in your campaign for — if my remedial math skills serve me — your 11th term as Delegate. What has been the biggest challenge for you this reelection campaign?

I think if you would have asked me this question about Congress, I would have said Republicans. [laughs] But the biggest challenge of this campaign has been that [in my last term] I could touch voting rights and had it slip away from me. I was really looking for it to be my tenth term, my twentieth year, with voting rights having gotten both through 60 votes in the Senate and overwhelming support in the House. I will go back to the House. I’m not going to leave it on the table.

D.C. has always gotten everything its gotten quite incrementally. First, they said we could elect our school board. Then, they said we will appoint a mayor for you. And then they said, only because people continued to struggle for it, okay, you can elect your mayor. But as you can see this year, I’m having to get us budget autonomy, because you still didn’t have the same rights that everybody else in the United States does. So I resign to incrementalism, and I’ve learned to work incrementally. I’ve been able to things done, even when Republicans [control the Congress]. You’ve got to say “how can I deal with them? I may have to deal with them again.”