Reacting to the latest proposal to grant statehood to the District of Columbia, the sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Dakota recently introduced legislation to merge most of D.C. with Maryland instead. Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Republican, suggested his District of Columbia-Maryland Reunion Act was something of a nonpartisan idea, too. After all, if the beef of D.C. residents is that they don’t have representation in Congress, why not share it with the residents of Maryland, a state that ceded ground to create the federal district in the first place? The congressman observed that Maryland remained a natural fit, since the two communities continue to be so similar, and regarded his fix was “not necessarily the all-Republican way.”
The idea was immediately rejected by elected officials in D.C. and Maryland, of course. They are pressing for D.C. statehood. But the concept raised an interesting idea: If like communities should be merged to share representation in Congress, what other such opportunities exist? Eureka, as they say in gold mining country. Mr. Johnson has found a nugget: Why not merge the nation’s least populous states or territories when they are contiguous? It wouldn’t involve Maryland, the nation’s 19th biggest state when ranked by population. Even the District has more residents than two states and four territories. No, the natural merger would involve Wyoming, the 50th of the 50 states when ranked by population. Its partner: neighboring South Dakota which has fewer than 900,000 residents and a ranking of 45th.