Yesterday there was a hearing in Lieberman’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. For anyone who follows this stuff, it was your standard fare. A lot of the same testimony from the same people.

I really liked Norton’s testimony. This is woman was definately not going through the motions. She even brought up the Colbert Report’s joke about her and Tom Davis having an affair. (Here’s the clip from the show.) Jack Kemp was awesome yesterday, and I think he will play a key role in getting the fence sitting Republicans to side with the bill.

I wanted to hear how GOP Senators Collins, Warner, and Coleman were going come down on the bill, but alas that did not happen. I was especially curious about Collins as Lieberman endorsed her and is raising money for her - much to the chagrin of the blogosphere.

Liberman says they’ll be a mark-up sometime after Memorial Day recess. Stay tuned…

(Note: Metroblogging DC is having a contest for a caption for the photo above. More details here.)

I wrote this in response to a letter that was recently submitted to the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill from a reader in Pennsylvania. You can read the original letter here. Hopefully it will be published next week.

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Dear Editor,

John Salsgiver should read both the “blood-bought Constitution” he references and the actual text of the DC Voting Rights Act before firing off letters such as “We the Sheeple” to The Hill. (Regarding
article, “House Dems secure win on D.C. voting rights bill,” April 20.)

The Constitution grants Congress authority over the District “in all Cases whatsoever”. Constitutional scholars from both sides of the aisle have testified before Congress that this clause gives Congress
the authority to grant the District a vote in the House of Representatives. Whether or not this is Constitutional is some the courts will ultimately need to decide, but his claim that the Constitution was “willfully violated” is quite a stretch.

I also take issue with Mr. Salsgiver claims that it won’t be long before demands are made for two voting Senators for the District – and his questioning if we can “smell the desperation” of Democrats looking to get three extra electoral votes from this bill.

I’m not sure what Mr. Salsgiver smells, but I don’t think that it’s desperation for electoral votes. I would remind Mr. Salsgiver that the 23rd amendment to the Constitution granted the District of Columbia the three electoral votes he fears so much back in 1961.

I would also remind the reader that the DC Voting Rights Act would grant an additional congressional district — and thus another electoral vote — to the state of Utah. It doesn’t take Charlie Cook
to figure out that Utah will likely be a Republican state in 2008. This is hardly the sort of legislation that would be passed by desperate Democrats.

The high of the DC Voting Rights Act passing in the House has worn off and the reality of the uphill battle looming in the Senate has sunk in amongst the supporters of DC Voting Rights. And the fact that Joe Lieberman may not be in charge of the bill in the Senate is another reason some are nervous about the future.

What do we do now? Simple. We step up our game.

This fight reminds me when I was working on a campaign to stop nuclear waste from being dumped at Yucca Mountain in 2002. Running the standard playbook, we targeted the usual suspects with “the world is going to end” environmental messaging. The results were so-so. However, when we reached out to conservative/right-leaning lists with a “states rights” message (instead of the environment) the action rate was several times higher.

If this bill is going to pass the Senate, we’re going to need to reach out beyond the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” liberal civil-rights crowd that has carried the water on this bill to date, and also reach out to the conservative media and interest groups and dangle the prospects of another Republican House seat (and, yes, electoral vote) for Utah in front of them.

It’s a basic segmentation of audience and message . . . not rocket science.

We are also going to need to:

• Put grassroots and grasstops pressure on Bennett and Hatch from Utah citizens
• Recruit, educate, and mobilize citizens in the states of the Senators whose committee(s) have jurisdiction over the bill
• Figure out which Senators are on the fence and what will move them

Yes, it’s going to be fight. But I do think it’s one we can win.

Do you have ideas? Please comment using the links below, I’d love to hear from you.

In case you haven’t heard by now, last week a few Republican Congressmen temporarily blocked the progress of the DC Voting Rights Act on the House floor using a rarely implemented parliamentary procedure. Representatives Lamar Smith (R-TX), Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) attempted to amend the DC Voting Rights Act by adding a section that would eliminate DC’s gun control laws. It was a pathetic attempt to not only deny over a half million people voting representation in Congress, but to also re-write our local laws to their liking.

This is only a minor setback. The bill will return to the House floor!

Can you please take a minute and make two phone calls to help with this effort? I need you to call both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Both have been champions on this issue and we need to thank them for their leadership in this fight. They also need to hear from people that this bill needs to brought back to the House floor this week before the upcoming recess.

Their phone numbers are below:

Speaker Pelosi: (202) 225-0100

Majority Leader Hoyer: (202) 225-3130

Please make the following points on your phone call:

* You are calling in regards to the DC Voting Rights Act
* You are very appreciative of their leadership on this issue
* You are urging the House leadership to bring the bill back to a floor vote this week.

Please take a few minutes and make the call today. These offices need to hear from people like you to get this bill back to the House floor. After you make your calls, please forward this email to others who would be supportive of this effort.

Don’t forget to tell your friends and co-workers about http://www.freeandequaldc.com

Great news from Capitol Hill today. The House Judiciary Committee passed the DC Voting Rights Act by a vote of 21-13. The bill is expected to go to the full floor sometime late next week. Most people, myself included, expect it to pass.

I was in the hearing room today during the mark-up, and it was entertaining to say the least. I have to take a minute to thank Representative Mike Pence (R-Ind.) who joined Democrats in voting for the bill. He also promised to help pass it in the full House.

According to the Washington Post, he told Delegate Norton his support was “heartfelt”. I know I speak for everyone in the District when we thank him for his vote and welcome his help for final passage. I hope people back in his district give him credit for this vote as well.

It’s been quite a week for this issue with a hearing and two successful markups from key committees. It took a lot of work from a lot of people to get us this far…but we are nowhere near having this thing signed, sealed, and delivered. When it passes the House, we still need to get it through the Senate and that’s gonna take work. You can help by taking two minutes and going to http://www.freeandequaldc.com - send the link to your friends, add it to your email signature, and just get people to take action!

We’re almost there, let’s keep up the momentum.

Here’s the post article:

House Committee Passes D.C. Voting Bill