For those of you who weren’t able to tune in to The Politics Hour on WAMU earlier (you can download the audio if you’d still like to listen), you missed House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in his first appearance ever on the program. Hoyer called in half way through the show to discuss the most recent developments on the D.C. House Voting Rights act, expressing his regret that he couldn’t get the bill scheduled for a vote next week.

NBC4’s Tom Sherwood asked Hoyer if there was a “drop-dead date” by which the congressman thought the bill would have to be brought to the floor, and Hoyer responded that he doesn’t “expect we’ll get past May and not get it done.”

In response to a question from DCist on whether he could see, after weeks of negotiations, any way forward to get the bill passed in the face of the gun amendment, Hoyer declined to go in to detail, but indicated he did think there was a viable scenario on the table. As far as the option proposed by Mayor Adrian Fenty, that the city should accept the gun amendment in exchange for the bill’s passage and worry about it later: “That is not my preference,” Hoyer said.