WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia’s presumptive incoming delegate to Congress unveiled a strategy Monday to counter Republican interventions in the city’s affairs by sending local residents to congressional districts in nearby states to stump for candidates who support greater autonomy for the nation’s capital.
Robert White Jr., the Democratic nominee to be the district’s sole delegate to Congress, unveiled the “Defend DC” mobilization effort, which he said will recruit, train and transport city residents and supporters to canvass for candidates who support the district’s independence. White will also launch a political action committee to support candidates that back D.C. statehood and local control.
“Congress has used its power over D.C. to attack us. So Washingtonians are banding together to use our collective power to change Congress,” White told a crowd of supporters in a downtown Washington plaza.
The Constitution gives federal lawmakers authority over the District of Columbia, while the Home Rule Act of 1973 lets residents elect a mayor, a council and neighborhood commissioners. But Congress maintains significant control, including approving the budget and all laws passed by the D.C. Council.
The D.C. delegate position is a nonvoting one, but it grants the nearly 700,000 people of the district, who have no other representation in Congress, a voice through speechmaking on the House floor and bill introduction.
Trump has squeezed Washington’s autonomy
White’s plan comes as Washington during the second Trump administration has faced multiple new challenges to its autonomy, most visibly the ongoing deployment of the National Guard which has been extended into 2029.
The plan will target U.S. House districts within driving distance of the nation’s capital in states like Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Jersey with members up for reelection who have backed President Donald Trump’s surge of federal agents into the district and who themselves have proposed efforts to overhaul the city’s governance.
“If politicians somewhere else believe they can come into our city and take away our rights without consequences, then we will go into their communities, the communities that determine whether those politicians keep their jobs,” White said.
The program’s first target will be Rep. John McGuire, a Virginia Republican who introduced legislation last year that would codify into law Trump’s executive order, “ Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful.”
The order paved the way for the deployment of the National Guard and federal law enforcement agents onto the streets of Washington, D.C. Trump later also briefly federalized the city’s police force.
D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson called White’s strategy necessary to protect D.C. residents’ constitutional rights.
“Our current situation is one that was not imagined nor intended by the Founding Fathers,” Mendelson said.
Taking the fight to the district’s congressional opponents has been central to White’s platform. He spoke of the strategy during debates. He also spoke of his plan the night of the June primary when he won the Democratic primary for the district’s delegate to Congress, ushering in generational change for a position long held by 18-term delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.
White’s win in the heavily Democratic city set him up to take the top spot in November’s general elections. Norton, 89 and a fixture of the Civil Rights movement, decided not to run again after facing growing concerns over her ability to forcefully push back against the Trump administration’s federal intervention into the city’s affairs.
One of Norton’s key roles has been to push back against incursions by Republicans in Congress who have grown increasingly willing to step into local affairs, despite the city’s Home Rule. In recent years, Congress members have tried to overturn the district’s motorcycle helmet law and ban the district’s use of automated traffic cameras.
White said he had spoken with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Rep. Susan DelBene, the chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm, about the strategy.
A plan modeled after a former delegate’s
White modeled the strategy after one used by the district’s first delegate, Walter Fauntroy Jr., a civil rights legend who mobilized voters in several key races, most notably in 1972 in South Carolina. His efforts there were instrumental in defeating Rep. John McMillan, who chaired the House District Committee and routinely blocked the district’s efforts to govern itself.
Michael Fauntroy, Fauntroy’s nephew, and the founding director of the Race, Politics, and Policy Center at George Mason University, said the elder Fauntroy drew on a relationship he had built during his civil rights work, especially in the South when he sought office and visited targeted districts.
“His strategy was primarily to focus on those congressional districts in which the Black voters composed the margin of victory in a particular district,” said Michael Fauntroy, who authored “Home Rule or House Rule? Congress and the Erosion of Local Governance in the District of Columbia.”
“At one point, there were roughly 100-some-odd districts around the country, primarily in the South in which the Black vote was the marginal vote,” he said.
The situation is more complicated now. Gerrymandering has left few competitive districts, and Fauntroy said he doesn’t know what kind of network White has.
“If you don’t have those connections, it’s going to be difficult to take the fight to somebody,” he said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.