Nor is it especially unusual for the party that controls Congress to admit states for political reasons. In 1864, Republican President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation admitting Nevada, then a
barely-populated desert with a few thousand residents, into the union as a state. Nevada didn’t have many people, but the few people who did live there were overwhelmingly Republican.
A dozen years later, President Ulysses Grant, also a Republican, signed legislation admitting the state of Colorado. According to the most recent census, Colorado had fewer than 40,00 residents when it became a state. Colorado was also dominated by Republicans at the time.
After Republicans defeated Democratic President Grover Cleveland in the 1888 election, they celebrated by splitting the GOP-dominated Dakota into two territories and admitting
both of them as states. Today, there are still two Dakotas because Gilded Age Republicans wanted four senators instead of just two.
Meanwhile, Republicans successfully blocked New Mexico from becoming a state until 1912. Cleveland’s Democrats had hoped to admit New Mexico, which favored Cleveland’s party.
These sorts of tactics are the kind of
constitutional hardball that political parties have freely embraced in a nation that, nonsensically, gives two senators to every state regardless of population. It would be best if the Senate were abolished, or at least apportioned by population.
But, until that day comes, admitting DC as a state would make the United States more small-d democratic. It would mean that over 700,000 DC residents were no longer disenfranchised. And it would provide a counterbalance to the arbitrary and anti-democratic advantage that Senate Republicans currently enjoy.
