Issue Position: Large House and Senate Majorities for D.C. Voting Rights Shot Down by Gun Lobby

Issue Position

Norton is working towards new efforts for equal rights after the next presidential election, after getting the D.C. House Voting Rights Act (DCVRA) through both houses of Congress. The House passed her bill in 2007, but it fell three votes short of the 60 needed in the Senate. The Senate passed the bill in February 2009, by a vote of 61-37, with six Republicans supporting the bill. However, the "Ensign Amendment," a dangerous gun provision that would have eliminated all of the District's local gun laws was attached to the bill. When it became clear that conservative House Democrats would not vote for the bill again without the gun amendment, Norton worked on legislative strategies to pass a clean DCVRA and then negotiated directly with gun lobbyists. She convinced House leadership to put a clean DCVRA in the defense appropriations bill, a must-pass bill, but the Senate would not agree. In the end, the powerful NRA lobby increased its demands beyond the Ensign Amendment to also include permitting guns to be carried openly or concealed in the city, permitting guns in city-owned buildings, except for those with certain high-level security equipment, and requiring owners of commercial and apartment buildings to allow lessees to have guns in these privately owned buildings. Norton therefore delayed the bill and turned her attention to preventing the passage of the gun lobby amendment as a standalone bill, which was introduced in both houses when the gun provision could not be attached to the House DCVRA. At the same time, differences between the House and Senate bills emerged jeopardizing both Democratic and Republican Senate votes. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the lead Republican Senate sponsor of the DCVRA was unwilling to vote for the House version of the DCVRA because it required that the new Utah seat be elected, but House Democrats feared that the Senate version, which required elections from congressional districts, would eliminate the only House Democrat from Utah. Simultaneously, some Democratic senators were unwilling to support the bill with a gun amendment. Thus, even without the gun amendment, the loss of Hatch doomed the bill because of the probable loss of the other Senate Republicans, who were necessary for passage. Norton is working towards the next presidential election, which, unlike the recent midterm, will bring out a broad cross section of voters, who polls have shown support the DCVRA by large, bipartisan margins.

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