A senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has gone national with his support for statehood for the District of Columbia.
Local and regional politicians have been fighting for DC statehood for 30 years now, where a population greater than Wyoming or Vermont pays federal tax but has no voting representatives in Congress.
The House for the first time approved legislation last year which would make DC the Douglass Commonwealth, the nation’s 51st state.
Republicans have long opposed DC statehood because its residents are overwhelmingly Democratic.