Who is Mike Panetta?

Mike Panetta was recently elected to the position of U.S. Representative in the November 7th election in the District of Columbia. The position is often referred to as the "Shadow Representative" and should not be confused with the office of Delegate to Congress, which is currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Mike has run several high-profile campaigns for DC representation including starting an Olympic team for the District and leading efforts to rebrand RFK Stadium as "Taxation Without Representation Field" Mike pledges to make the DC voting rights issue a national one that is embraced by progressive activists across the country.

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The Delegate Vote: Not Enough

Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 12:58pm

So the House gave the chamber’s delegates (Distirct of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa) the right yesterday to vote on amendments to bills on the House floor, a privilege that really only symbolic. This was also the case for a few years during the time Democrats controlled the House when President Clinton was in office - but the GOP majority took it away in 1995.
While I’m sure they meant well, I think this was handled poorly as it was rammed through Congress in a very partisan way, and will likely cost us some bi-partisan of the bill that really matters — H.R. 328.

Also, this delegate vote in the Committee of the Whole business is going to confuse the issue among Members of Congress who don’t really focus on such matters. I can already hear some of them saying “Didn’t we already to that?” when we ask for a DC Congressional vote later this session.

According to the Post, Delegate Norton was also not happy about the way this went down:

“This debate is extremely heartbreaking for me,” Norton said in an impassioned floor speech, after Republicans assailed the rule change. She questioned why lawmakers were arguing about the constitutionality of the limited measure, when the courts had upheld it in the 1990s. She said Congress should instead be considering the broader bill, which supporters call their best hope in years of getting the District a full vote in the House.

Also, Gary Imhoff at DC Watch had this to say in his “themail” newsletter:

Although the bill to give the DC voting status in the House along with giving Utah a new Congressional district (HR 328) had bipartisan support and would probably pass this year, today the Democratic majority again revised the House rules to give Committee of the Whole voting rights to all five nonvoting delegates. This move imperils, and may doom, bipartisan support for HR 328, and it guarantees that the next time Republicans have a majority in the House they will strip Committee of the Whole voting rights from the DC delegate along with the other four delegates.

What we really need is Nancy Pelosi (and the rest of the Democratic Leadership) to commit to bringing the DC Voting Rights bill (H.R. 328) to the floor, so it the mark-up committee process can begin. You can help make this happen by calling her office at: (202) 225-0100 or contacting her online by clicking here: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/

Here’s a link to the full Post Article:

Delegates Gain Limited Voting Rights
Norton Pushes to Equalize District’s Footing With That of State Representatives

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