Photo by Victoria Pickering.

As Capitol Hill’s Upper Chamber holds nomination hearings for the president-elect’s cabinet and makes procedural moves to roll back the Affordable Care Act, advocacy groups implore concerned citizens to “Call your Senator!”

But the closest thing D.C. residents have to elected senators work out of the John A. Wilson Building, more than two miles from the action, and have no vote in the legislative body.

“You’re watching eight years of positive legacy get stripped away vote by vote,” says D.C. Shadow Senator Paul Strauss, a Democrat. “It makes me feel awful inside that there’s not more I could be doing to help my constituents and my country. It’s a sad time to be a non-voting senator.”

Residents are still calling him, though. Strauss says in the past few days, he’s heard the most from constituents concerned about the repeal of the ACA, as well as Senator Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general, and, to a lesser degree, Rex Tillerson’s bid to be the next secretary of state.

“[The calls] that really confuse me are the ones that call me up and complain, and then ask if we have any inaugural tickets left,” says Strauss. (Well, does he? “We get a very limited number,” he says. “Normally there’s a lot of horse-trading and scrounging for extra tickets that goes on, but I haven’t had the stomach for that this year.”)

D.C.’s other shadow senator, Michael D. Brown, also a Democrat, says his office phone hasn’t been ringing. “People understand that I really don’t have a vote, so I don’t get a lot of phone calls or emails,” he says. “Of course, when I’m out and about people talk to me about it all the time. They understand in the end that I’m a sounding board and not a voting representative.”

The shadow senators, and shadow Representative Franklin Garcia, aren’t the only District elected officials with very limited power on the Hill.

D.C.’s non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced a motion that would have given her a floor vote, as she did during the 103rd, 110th, and 111th Congress. The motion failed on party lines, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans opposed. Unlike Strauss and Brown, though, she can still vote in House committees and makes a government salary.

Strauss has tried to make the argument in the past that, in limited circumstances, the D.C. shadow senator should have a vote.

“If there’s an argument to be made, whether it’s in court or procedurally, we’ll do our best to try and do that,” says Strauss. “At the same time, I recognize that a lot of what we’re trying to do here in the next few years is work with people on the other side of the aisle because we’re going to be fighting all kinds of fights.”

One of the first bouts will be over D.C.’s Death With Dignity Act. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Congressman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) introduced companion resolutions of disapproval on Thursday to overturn a bill that would enable doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients.

For a bill to become law in D.C., it must first be passed by our elected representatives in the D.C. Council and signed by the mayor—then it needs to pass a 30-day Congressional review. Most of the time, nothing happens and the legislation goes into effect. But a lawmaker from any state can introduce a disapproval resolution to block the bill. The resolution must be passed by both chambers and signed by the president to overturn the will of D.C. voters.

Wenstrup said that not acting in the case of the Death with Dignity law “will imply tacit federal approval of physician-assisted suicide—and I firmly believe that is not the right path.”

Norton argued that, if Wenstrup and Lankford care so much, they should focus their ire on federal policy rather than targeting local D.C. legislation. “Since they believe medical aid-in dying is bad policy, Senator Lankford and Representative Wenstrup should advocate their positions on the national stage, where Congress has clear jurisdiction, and introduce bills to prohibit physicians nationwide from prescribing lethal doses of medication, instead of singling the District out for different treatment,” she said, and has vowed to fight the measures.

It’s a tale as old as time for Brown. “These guys use the District of Columbia as a testing ground for their own political agenda,” says Brown. “We end up being the whipping boy for a lot of these conservatives and it’s terrible.”

He says Republican lawmakers on the Hill have mostly been dismissive of him in person. “Congress is not, in any official capacity, required to interact with me, so that’s very often the reaction you get from conservatives,” he says. “Democrats who respect the office more tend to be more interactive.”

Strauss says that he does have “many good friends that we’ve got from both parties who’ve been real advocates for us,” though he declined to name names. “The great thing about behind the scenes maneuvering is that it works really great behind the scenes,” he says, though he lists off former Republican senators Mike DeWine of Ohio and Sam Brownback of Kansas as past allies.

Norton told DCist that the Senate was generally much more favorable to the District than the House. ” Basically, the House will always do the bad thing and you have to go to the Senate,” she said last week.

But for Brown, “what I do more than behind the scenes is try to be out there.” He points to pro-statehood billboards he and former Shadow Representative Mike Panetta put up during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, as well as his weekly radio show, which he says boasts 8,000 listeners.

All of D.C.’s elected officials agree that the real solution is statehood for D.C.—two senators and at least one representative who can fully represent residents on the Hill. After all, the city has a higher population than two states and paid more in federal taxes than 22 states last year.

There have been some gains in recent months. The 2016 Democratic platform supported statehood for D.C. after a 12-year absence and Norton mentioned the cause in a floor speech at the convention. The shadow delegation visited states with caucuses, like Iowa and Nevada, to get support for the measure in state platforms. Mayor Muriel Bowser went to the Republican National Convention to advocate for the cause, though the official party platform opposes making D.C. the 51st state.

Most importantly, more than 80 percent of D.C. residents voted for a statehood referendum in November. It legally requires D.C. to present Congress with its bid for statehood.

“It’s designed to follow the swearing in of a new president,” says Strauss. “While that’s clearly happening, the specific strategy is still being discussed. To say that I’m less optimistic about its chances in the 115th Congress than I was before the election is an understatement.”

That’s because statehood has become such a partisan issue. As Ohio Governor John Kasich put it, “That’s just more votes in the Democratic Party.”

“We need some Republicans to stand with us, and Republicans have stood with us before,” says Brown. “That’s definitely going to be part of the new strategy.”

One chance to hobnob happened last night, Brown and Strauss joined Bowser at a reception on the Hill to welcome new legislators to the District and award Washington Monument benefactor David Rubenstein a key to the city.

Brown would like to see more residents fighting back: “We have a situation here where we’re denied our most basic civil rights. We have a rally and 150 people show up and I know 125 of them by name because they show up for everything. We just never get enough people to show up.”

Even if all of D.C.’s residents showed up on the National Mall, though, “we cannot bestow statehood upon ourselves,” he says. “We need people in the states to stand with us.”

That’s why Brown also wants the city government to dedicate more money to a nationwide advertising campaign on behalf of statehood. He imagines billboards with a photo of one of D.C.’s 30,000 veterans that say, “‘This young man or woman went to fight in Afghanistan and Congressman So-and-So doesn’t think they deserve the same rights you do,'” he says. “That’s what we need to do, is embarrass these people. We really need to be on the offensive.”

Strauss sees his role as shadow senator differently. “You have to resist temptation to do purely symbolic things that will please the base that may damage your relationship with conservative members who we’re going to need behind the scenes,” he says. “When you’re on defense, you literally are playing a different position.”

So what should D.C. residents be doing while everyone else is picking up the phone?

“There’s a lot that we who are physically in the District of Columbia can do, in terms of showing up at hearings and being physically present at a lot of these sessions,” Strauss says. “While I cant vote on behalf of the people who voted for me, we often can have an easier time packing galleries and showing up at demonstrations and making our voice heard in other ways.”

And don’t put down your phone just yet. “By all means,” Strauss says, “Keep calling!”