Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin told a local radio show Friday morning that he did not support statehood for the District of Columbia, a potential fatal blow to the effort to elevate the area around the nation’s center of government.
According to the Washington Post, Manchin said that DC statehood should not be pursued through legislation in Congress but through a Constitutional amendment.
“They all came to the same conclusion: If Congress wants to make D.C. a state, it should propose a constitutional amendment. It should propose a constitutional amendment and let the people of America vote,” Manchin said in a radio interview with Hoppy Kercheval of West Virginia’s MetroNews.
Manchin’s opposition to Congressional action centers on the fact that the district was outlined in the Constitution as intentionally an area that was not part of a state. However, constitutional scholars have said that there are work-arounds for providing statehood to the areas where people reside, while maintaining a “federal zone” in executive, judicial, legislative and bureaucratic offices.
Historically, new states were admitted via Congressional action and the signature of the President. No other statehood efforts required a Constitutional amendment.