Photo by Laura Padgett

Despite increasingly long odds, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton says she is still trying to push the D.C. House Voting Rights Act through Congress.

Norton recently told WAMU that she’s at this very minute working with the House Rules Committee to finally bring the legislation to a vote. “We are close to the point where we will be taking this bill to the floor. We’re working on odds and ends of the kind you always have to put to bed before a bill goes to the floor,” she’s quoted as saying.

The legislation was tabled last June when the Democratic leadership couldn’t find a way to remove a GOP-led amendment that would have gutted the District’s gun laws. The Senate passed the bill, gun amendment and all, last February. That amendment, which has ever since plagued efforts to push the measure forward, divided city officials and pundits last year, with Mayor Adrian Fenty and WTOP Political Analyst Mark Plotkin arguing that the city should just accept it and deal with it later, while others, Norton included, continued pushing for a clean bill. As recently as late January, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he still didn’t see a way forward on the bill due to this lack of consensus.

So has anything changed, or is Norton merely trying to pretend like there’s finally been a breakthrough? Even DC Vote, which loudly advocated for the bill for years, seems to be unsure. The organization is planning an advocacy day for April 16, to coincide with D.C. Emancipation Day, but they’re not yet able to say whether they’ll be stumping for the voting rights bill or for a number of other bills dealing with legislative and budgetary autonomy that are floating around on the Hill.

In somewhat related news, the D.C. Council’s Special Committee on Statehood and Self-Determination decided this week to scrap plans for a National Statehood Day on April 16 and instead focus their efforts on celebrating the 148th year since Abraham Lincoln freed slaves in the District, nine months before he did so in the rest of the country.