Tangle - D.C. statehood and why retrocession might work

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

On today's podcast, we sat down with David Krucoff, the founder and executive director of Douglass County Maryland, a 501c4 that is advocating for the creation of Douglass County, Maryland, as a solution to the issue of D.C. statehood. David was also an independent candidate for Congress whose ideas about solving the D.C. statehood issue has gotten him coverage in the DCist, the Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post and many others.During the show, David explains why he is pursuing retrocession, his qualms with D.C. statehood, and why a change is needed in the first place.If you're interested in more, you can follow David on Twitter here. You can also find his website about Douglass County, Maryland, here. If you are not yet a subscriber to Tangle, you can do that here: https://www.readtangle.com/about--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some reasonable debate and independent thinking, without all the hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we are joined by a very interesting guest, David Krukoff. David is the founder and executive director of Douglas County, Maryland, a 501c4 that is advocating for the creation of Douglas County, Maryland as a solution to the issue of DC statehood. David's also an independent candidate for Congress whose ideas about solving the D.C. statehood issue have gotten him coverage in all your local D.C. papers, the D.C.ist, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post, many others. David, thank you

so much for coming on and joining us. My pleasure. I'm very happy to be with you today. So before we jump in, let's get in a little background about you. I mean, you're a candidate for Congress. You're in the political world. You've got this really interesting organization. How did you get into this? What's your story? Where are you from? How'd you end up in the political world? for Congress because I lost her. I got blitzkrieged last year by a 15-term incumbent who's also a civil rights icon. Her name is Eleanor Holmes Norton. So with that small correction, I'm a third-generation Washingtonian. I love politics. I like to interact with people. And I care about my fellow Washingtonians and about trying to become full citizens. We are full citizens, but to become citizens that are not second class by law. So that's a little bit about me. And I could also talk about how I started this whole process of creating Douglas County, Maryland, if you're interested in that.

of creating Douglas County, Maryland, if you're interested in that. Yeah, I think, you know, before we go there, it seems to me to be important for our listeners, at least to sort of have like a baseline to jump off of. So, you know, I've covered the issue of DC statehood a bit in Tangle and my newsletter, but maybe we could just start with some one-on-one stuff there. Can you explain to our listeners, what's the issue you're trying to solve for? I mean, what's the big beef? Why are things not okay as they are in Washington, D.C. and for Washington, D.C. residents? So the District of Columbia is a product of the Constitution and of compromise. And we were created out of or seeded out of land from Maryland and Virginia. And we actually had a congressperson, his name was Uriah Forrest, back in the 1790s.

And we voted through the state of Maryland and through the state of Virginia, because we were seated from those two places, prior to something called the Organic Act of 1801. But back when the Constitution was created, the states or the colonies were the power, and the federal government was an infant. Almost, you know, it was, the federal government didn't have the heritage, the power, the legacy, the fighting forces, all the trappings of what we have as a federal government now. So there were people, I guess, Alexander Hamilton and other founding fathers who were very concerned about

something called factionalism and basically having too much power within the state of Maryland and the state of Virginia or whoever had the capital would have power because all they could think about was the power of the colony, not the power of the federal government. I mean, you know, federal income tax didn't exist till, I guess, what, 1920? I'm not even sure when that happened. So they were concerned about that. So they made this area up to 10 miles square, called the District of Columbia. And then they realized that, you know, Maryland could have undue power over it in their mind. So they took away any power Maryland and Virginia could have. Remember, everything was on the Maryland side. And they had this thing called the Organic Act of 1801. So there's things in the Federalist Papers and there's things about in the Constitution that

says that we'll be totally under the control of Congress. But the real trappings of our disenfranchisement occurred with the Organic Act of 1801, when Congress and the President then signed that bill, took away any types of enfranchisement that the citizens of Washington, D.C. had. Obviously, there weren't that many people then. So we no longer had Uriah Forrest, although he lost soon. I think he only had one term. But we didn't have voting representation at all. We didn't have senators. We still don't

have senators. We didn't have a congressperson. We still don't have a congressperson. We were not happy about that back in 1801. We have not been happy about that for 220 years since then. But Congress and the president and the country had some realization that this was not the way to be for the long term. And let's at least have D.C. vote for the president. So we had the 23rd Amendment in the 1960s. Of course, way prior to this, the whole country was developed in the slavery, not slavery argument and the Civil War and the trappings of Reconstruction and that kind of thing. So there is a lot of legacy there too, which I can discuss also, which is germane or pertinent to this discussion. But Congress decided that we would get representation in this sense of the three electoral college votes that we have. So the first election that my parents ever voted for was Lyndon Johnson versus Barry Goldwater, I guess, 1964. And that was the first time that they,

rather than participating in the actual fun and dandy of the election in terms of the parties and get togethers, they actually got to vote then. And that's all we've had really ever since. There are other things also regarding the way that we manage our city, the way that we interact with the government, the way that we have, there's other issues involved, and I can go into those in greater detail. But essentially, we are second class citizens by law. There are over 700,000 of us, which is very close to a congressional district. I think the last population assessment would make a congressional district on average 760,000 people. So we basically are a congressional district disenfranchised of full Americans of all types in the very capital of the country. And we are the only capital that I know of, I think that you can look this up as well,

where the citizens of that capital place are disenfranchised in the body politic, in the legislature, the national legislature. I think that other countries that followed our federalist or constitutional democracy even realized that this was a mistake. And places like Brasilia and other places that had a disenfranchised core or capital realized and they changed it. But not us. We're still disenfranchised by law, although we can vote for president. Right. And just to put a fine point on it, I mean, the main issue is that there's no representation in Congress for citizens of Washington, D.C. And I am obviously aware and have written about some of the solutions out there. I think maybe fairly describe this as the mainstream one, which is HR 51. This is a piece of legislation that's been approved by Democrats

in the House and Congress. I covered it in Tangle. And it would essentially turn Washington, D.C. into a state. It would give it two senators, one House member, reduce the size of the actual federal district, the 10 mile blocks that you're describing to a two block radius that just encompasses the White House, Capitol Building, Supreme Court, and it would allow D.C. to keep its three electoral college votes, which you just alluded to about your parents and their first election. So before we get into your solution, I want to hear, I mean, what's your criticism of HR 51? Why is that solution not something that's plausible or fair in your mind?

It is plausible. It is fair. It is a way to go. are costly and it has not proven to be a solution that is embraced by the body politic, the jury of our peers, the country. So the will of the people, it turns out, can be a bill in Congress signed by the president that can make us the 51st state. But the will of the people has to be expressed by the House of Representatives, by the U.S. Senate, and then signed by the president. Thus far, that has not occurred. So we have tried to be the 51st state since the mid or lower 1980s through this method. So far, we have not succeeded, and there is no evidence that we will succeed this year either.

Was there a time in your political career where you were advocating for D.C. to have full statehood as the 51st state? I'm not anti-51st statehood. I'm pro-retrocession. But I was all about the state of New Columbia back in 1983 or 1984 when I was a junior, I believe, in high school, because that's when it really started in its earnestness. So prior to the mid-1980s, there was a voting rights amendment to the Constitution. Now, one way to solve this problem, our disenfranchisement, is through a constitutional amendment like the 23rd Amendment, but this time it would also incorporate voting rights in the congressional, in the national body, our national legislatures, our bicameral legislatures. So Jimmy Carter is

president. The Congress, both the House and Senate are controlled by Democrats. They put out a bill in 1978 that would be a constitutional amendment that would make D.C. have two senators and one congressperson. We would not be officially be a state. Everything else being equal would have that representation. Jimmy Carter signs it. It goes to the states. Isaac, as you know, it takes three fourths of the states to pass that constitutional amendment. it takes three-fourths of the states to pass that constitutional amendment. It had a certain amount of time that it could have passed that amendment, the states. I think it requires 36, and I think it got 16. It could be off by one state or two, but it came up way short of getting the number of state legislatures to back it. It state instead because we think we can pass that bill.

And we were all about new Columbia. I'm part of the high school that's really into talking about these things, a very liberal and open-oriented discussion-based high school where we sit around in circles and call our teachers by the first name. And I was all about New Columbia. And over a process of decades, I started to become more of a passionate pragmatist as opposed to being somebody who's just passionate. So that's a great segue into my next question. We sort of touched on the history of this issue, what you're trying to solve for, what one of the more mainstream solutions is that's out there. So now I'd like to sort of give you a chance to make your pitch. I mean, what is your solution? What is the goal you're pursuing? And why is it better? I mean, it sounds like part of the reason is because you think it's more likely to actually happen. It's a more unifying path forward that is better for the country as a whole. And so let's now back up. Let's now back up to the underlying divide historically in our country, which is slavery and racism to a certain degree, but slavery principally.

So the only way that residents of the District of Columbia have ever gained our complete voting rights without moving occurred already. It happened in 1846 to 1847 when the Virginia portion, remember, the District of Columbia shall be no greater than 10 miles square, and 31 square miles was on the Virginia side. And it was all encompassed by Alexandria City back in the 1840s. pale, white, land-owning Virginians were scared of losing their full rights to slavery back in the 1840s. There were already abolitionist feelings taking place within Georgetown,

within other areas of Washington, D.C., although Washington, D.C. was still very much a slave place. So the Virginians were seeing the tea leaves, and they said, you know what? We're not on the side of the river where all the power is anyway. It's really a pain to cross the river, and everybody's over there, and we got to cross the river to mingle with them. We don't have any of, we don't got anything over here. Plus, we might lose our rights to slavery or some degree of our rights to slavery. You know what?

Let's just fall back. Let's go back into Virginia. So the fact is that they went back. They passed a bill in Congress. They asked Congress to pass a bill. They passed a bill. It was passed to pass a bill. They passed a bill. It was passed in this house, passed in the Senate. It didn't get signed by the president then.

It then got accepted back in Virginia. There was a referendum in Alexandria City, passed. There was a referendum in Alexandria County, passed. It went to the Virginia House of Delegates, passed. It went to the Virginia House of Delegates, passed. It went to the Virginia Senate, passed. It went to the Virginia governor, signed. It then went back to President Polk, signed, and the Virginia portion fell back.

Now, it was for nefarious reasons, but it worked. The method is still potent today. And that remains the only way the residents of the district of columbia have ever gained our complete voting rights without moving is through the process of retrocession so i i know this i i'm aware of this i'm out of college now and i'm in business and you know i I'm passionate about this issue. I joined a group called the Committee for the Capital City. And what we do is we get together and drink beers and talk and nothing, we do nothing. It's just really, really unproductive.

But we, you know, occasionally might go to something. you know, occasionally might go to something. Well, it turns out we went to, in 2014, a hearing in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the same committee today that could have a hearing on 51st statehood. And I'm in the room. Actually, I'm not in the room originally. I'm in an overflow room because there are hundreds of Washingtonians in the overflow room and in the actual committee room. And there's 15 senators, senators. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCcellvax.ca. In this committee, and somehow one of our group has got a few chairs, and we get into the back of the room. So there's three or four of us in the back of the room. And the only senator there now is Carper, Delaware, who, by the way, is the lead senator still to this day,

who is supporting the lead sponsor in the Senate for SR 51, which is the version of HR 51, which is the bill that makes D.C. the 51st state. the 51st state. So, Carper is there and all the other senators have left behind their robust table up high is just Carper, Coburn's gone, all the Democratic senators gone, and in front of them is a table of, you know, erudite, astute Washingtonians, the mayor, the head of the city council, maybe the finance person with the city, and another person for the one person for the Republican side, this guy named Roger Pilon from the Cato Institute.

And then Carper finally says, hey, is there anything else that we can do besides make D.C. the 51st state? And then every single one of these people, these testifiers, these witnesses, say there's nothing else that we can do. The three witnesses on the Democratic side, the mayor, they all start talking about it's got to be, this is the only solution. And then it gets to Roger Pilon, and he says, all start talking about, it's gotta be, this is the only solution.

And then it gets to Roger Pilon and he says, DC should just not pay federal income taxes. And I'm in the back of the room with my group and we're like, live it. Because we know that every single person who knows anything in that august 5,000 square foot, 24 foot high ceiling place knows about the Virginia retrocession of 1846 to 1847. And they just did not discuss it right then and when they got a direct question from the senator. So at that point in time, I got angry.

And my group, which was fairly ineffective and not doing much, I decided to break off and make another group called Douglas County, Maryland. So that's what happened. What is Douglas County, Maryland? Douglas County, Maryland, what are the initials, Isaac, of Douglas County, Maryland? D.C. And after I created Douglas County, Maryland, what do you think the Washington power structure changed the name from of the 51st state from New Columbia? Douglas Commonwealth, I believe. Correct. They all of a sudden, within months of me making a 501c4 called Douglas County, Maryland, all of a sudden, no longer it's called New Columbia.

It's called Douglas Commonwealth, the 51st state. And Isaac, who is Douglas Commonwealth or Douglas County named after? Well, I know Douglas Commonwealth is named after Frederick Douglas. I'm not sure who Douglas Commonwealth is named after Frederick Douglass. I'm not sure who Douglas Commonwealth is named after. Douglas County. Both are named after Frederick Douglass. Got it. And Frederick Douglass was a famous and brilliant abolitionist. And where was Frederick Douglass born? I don't know the answer to that question. The eastern shore of Maryland. And where did Frederick Douglass die? The District of Columbia. He died a second class citizen, not by nature of his color, but by nature the monumental core of the District of Columbia is some of the

best land on that side of the Anacostia River. The Anacostia River is a branch off of the Potomac River, both within the confines of the District of Columbia. So he is the inspirational leader of our movement towards enfranchisement. The problem with the movement towards our enfranchisement is that they forgot the reason for the movement. If they were to argue, I'm saying the power structure in town, which is this is a, D.C. is a fully democratic power structure, to argue for our enfranchisement, then they must be inclusive of retrocession in their argument. So long as they are not inclusive of retrocession, a second retrocession, their argument is actually fallacious from the start.

There is no moral difference between a second retrocession or the creation of 51st state. Now, there are technical differences, but either way, us Washingtonians become fully enfranchised. We get two more senators. We get two senators. We get a congressperson. senators, we get a congressperson, we get enhanced local autonomy, which gets into how we run the city. So we get all those things in either way. So either solution is morally acceptable. But if you can't discuss the technicalities, the rest of it, then you're not being moral in the first place. So what do Marylanders think of this? I mean, what's the response been like from people who reside in the state of Maryland? Because I imagine adding a city to any state that borders any state would draw some pretty serious pushback, especially if, you know, you're a Republican who lives in Maryland, which has a Republican

governor, and you're imagining the influx of 700,000 predominantly Democratic voters. I mean, what's that conversation like? How does that go? voters. I mean, what's that conversation like? How does that go? Well, so historically, the refrain from the power structure, which is the democratic power structure in the District of Columbia, is that no one in Maryland wants us. But of course, the statement from the Marylanders is no one in D.C. wants to be part of Maryland. So we're sort of in a, in a, um, sort of a back and forth of, of let's not get married conversation. It's sort of like,

let's just be happy with each other being disenfranchised, you being disenfranchised and us, you know, being well off in Maryland and everything. Great. So it's up to us in the district of Columbia to go first. That's what happened the first time. The people who lived in the District of Columbia on the Virginia side asked to come back. They talked to Congress. If Larry Hogan and John Sarbanes and Jamie Raskin and a variety of other Maryland politicians say, I'm in favor of a second retrocession, let's do this and invite us to join them. Yes, it would be great. But that's really not the first step. The first step is for us to embrace our own enfranchised future existence, as opposed to for us to embrace a disenfranchised condition where we get to complain.

So where are you now? I mean, you mentioned at the top of the show that you lost your congressional race. I imagine you might throw your hat back in the ring sometime in the future, but where's the movement? I mean, what kind of traction is a Douglas County, Maryland getting? Right now, I'm hopeful that there will be a hearing on the Senate side for SR 51. I don't think there will be, although there's been discussion that there might be. HR 51 will fail in this session of Congress again. is speaking in the sense that they're already rejecting S-1, which was a continuation of H-R-1, which is a voting rights bill that over the past weekend, again, Senator Manchin said he is opposed to that. And again, he has stated that he is not in favor of editing the filibuster rules specifically to the nearly to the extent that other Democrats would be interested in.

So H.R. 51 or S.R. 51 is is a even more aspirational bill than S.1 or H.1. So it's really kind of dead in the water. Our leader since 1990 has been Eleanor Holmes Norton. And she has only focused on 51st statehood. So long as she is our leader, and she has certain standing as a person within the House of Representatives. Our disenfranchisement is solidified. I can tell you personally that there are Maryland senators, congressmen, let's say congressmen, I don't know about the senators,

that would be in favor or would support a second retrocession but won't talk about it yet. So Eleanor Holmes Norton is 84 years old or 83 years old. She's going to probably run again. Mario Bowser will probably be the mayor again. And they are all about 51st statehood. It is modus operandi number one for them.

It is part of their fiber. It is part of their everyday pitch, whether it's signs up that are technically illegal or whether it's having a full agency in the District of Columbia government that lobbies for it on a daily basis. You name it. system of re-election, a system of developing expectations, not fulfilling them, but getting re-elected in the process. So that's going to continue. The way that I foresee this is that over the course of this decade, the things will change and that the Washingtonians will start to understand the situation when, particularly when Eleanor is no longer our congressperson. And I don't see her being our congressperson for another, I see her one more term. And frankly, I see a new congressperson coming in there, I see Jamie Raskin in Maryland, who's somebody I grew up with at Georgetown Day School,

who's somebody who's from Adams Morgan in Washington, D.C., not from Tacoma Park in Maryland, helping lead, I hope with my help, an effort for a second retrocession. But it's got to start really from us in Washington, D.C. recession, but it's got to start really from us in Washington, D.C. For folks who want to kind of follow this fight and keep tabs on what you're up to, what's the best way for them to do that? First and foremost, I would invite you, please, to follow me on Twitter. It's just dkrucoff, at dkrucoff on Twitter, D-K-R-U-C-O-F-F. I would invite you to take a look at our website,

Douglas with two S's, CountyMD.org. And I would invite you to chime in to your congresspersons and senators that would say, listen, the disenfranchisement of the District of Washingtonians is abhorrent, but any solution must include a discussion of the merits and demerits of both a second retrocession and 51st statehood. So the only way for us to qualify for Article I of the Constitution, for us to have voting rights in the Congress, is for us to be either our own state or to be part of a state. So that's the solution, barring another amendment to the Constitution, which I would argue is even harder than legislation, than normal legislation. So that's the solution, statehood. It can be 51st statehood or it can be retrocession. Both are statehood.

Both Douglas County, Maryland and Douglas Commonwealth are both statehood. People in Arlington County, Virginia, have statehood. They place sometimes in the House of Representatives when certain Republicans on the Oversight Committee start trying to argue against 51st statehood and don't embrace retrocession. The only argument or retort to 51st statehood is the second retrocession. The other retorts do not have merit. And I can get into the retorts if you wanted to go down these discussions of moving or other constitutional stuff too. David, thank you for the time. I appreciate it. I'm going to put some stuff in the show notes for people to follow along, DouglasCountyMaryland.com. Make sure your Twitter handle is in there so people can keep track on this i mean it has huge implications

for the country regardless of where it goes whether it's you know the statehood in the traditional sense as an independent 51st state or a retro session i think it's a really important thing and uh you know i i personally have said this in the newsletter but it's a really important thing. And, you know, I personally have said this in the newsletter, but it's worth saying here that I am in your corner in the sense that I think it's absurd for 700,000 people not to have a member of Congress representing them. Right. And I would say one other point about 51st statehood. One can argue that 51st statehood is a partitioning of a state in other words the state of maryland is being broken up into two states because we were land that was from maryland do you know when the last time a state was partitioned north dakota and south dakota they were not states they were

territories the last time a state was partitioned was when West Virginia fell out of Virginia. Do you know what occurred to make that happen? The Civil War. It took a Civil War for a state to be partitioned last time, 1861. Joe Manchin perfectly well knows this. He's in charge of West Virginia politics in many ways. That is where we are. We can have a divisive method of trying to enfranchise Washingtonians that fails, or we can have a unifying method that brings us together. In the process, we can discuss the economics of both 51st statehood or a retrocession, a second retrocession. And I can go into the weeds about the,

there's plenty of economical issues that make 51st statehood probably inferior to a second retrocession. And we happy to follow up on those weedy issues with you, or maybe on a second podcast, if your listeners are so inclined to like this one. I don't think this issue is going anywhere. So I look forward to our next chance to chat, and I'll be keeping an eye on the happenings in Congress to see how things play out.

Thank you so much for having me today. Thank you, David. Today's podcast was produced by Tangle Media in partnership with our friends over at Impostor Radio. If you enjoyed the podcast, be sure to give it a five-star rating, share it with your friends, and go check out readtangle.com for more. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.