Making the 51st State a Place for Jesse Jackson?

Paying off Jesse Jackson and his constituency might not pose such a great problem after all for Michael S. Dukakis, if elected. Hints of the prize emerged at the Atlanta convention, when delegates from the District of Columbia sought assurance that the Dukakis camp would support statehood for the federal city, which is more than 70% black and one of the homes of Jackson.

Indeed, at the important pre-convention summit in Atlanta the Monday before the nomination, Dukakis pledged enthusiastic support for the measure. This news was met with yawns, since D.C. statehood has been one of the more tiresome priorities of the left for decades, sort of the Democratic equivalent of a pledge to return to the gold standard. A proposed 28th amendment to the Constitution addressed voting representation in Congress for Washington’s 628,500 residents; it sailed through Congress a decade ago but then sank without a bubble after the states ignored the seven-year ratification deadline. Theoretically, the Carter Administration had the power to bring the state of Columbia into being but some Democrats, including those from neighboring Maryland and Virginia, have traditionally opposed the proposal.

A Dukakis Administration, however, may find the 51st state an idea whose time has come. The new Democratic President could present it to a presumably Democratic Congress and expect quick approval in 1989, since, according to some observers, it takes only a simple majority for creation.

“You don’t need an amendment (to the Constitution),” admitted Howard H. Baker Jr., the recently retired White House chief of staff who was Republican Senate leader for eight years. “You can follow the ‘Tennessee form,’ that is to create your own state government and petition the national government for admission.”

The political benefits for Democrats are obvious. Statehood would almost surely create two virtually permanent seats in the Senate for blacks, including the chance to put the upper chamber majority two more votes out of the reach of Republicans, perhaps locking up Democratic control for the rest of the century.

Tactically, statehood would give Jackson something to focus his energies on. Democrats, curiously, have never elected a black to the Senate, and there has been only one black senator in this century, Edward W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican who served from 1967 through 1973. A Senate seat could be a direct reward to the perennial candidate since Jackson would be virtually certain of election if he decided to run. For Dukakis, the new state of Columbia might be the perfect means of keeping Jackson busy during the critical honeymoon period next year.

And there’s more. Republicans could be expected to oppose statehood unanimously, since it would mean a permanent reduction of their margin in the Senate. GOP opposition would antagonize blacks, who are not likely to respond favorably to reasoned arguments that would exclude consideration of their basic need for representation--”inclusion,” as Jackson calls it. There is the risk, of course, of further polarizing the races, but that will be a much bigger problem for Republicans than Democrats. New GOP efforts to draw blacks away from the Democratic Party would be thwarted by opposition to D.C. statehood.

Even the battle about statehood could be yet another plus for the Dukakis Administration because, after passage by a Democratic Congress and bill-signing by a Democratic President, the Republicans would almost certainly take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the technical anti-statehood argument might well prevail, on grounds that a star in the flag for the District of Columbia indeed requires an amendment to the Constitution, not just a simple majority in Congress. The district, unlike Hawaii, Alaska or the island of Puerto Rico, was specifically mentioned by the founding fathers as a piece of real estate not to be politicized.

“The question is whether the combination of pre-existing clauses in the Constitution, specific to the District of Columbia, are mutually exclusive with a simple act of Congress admitting the district as a state,” explained William W. Van Alstyne, Duke University professor of constitutional law. Henry P. Monaghan, Harlan Fiske Stone professor of constitutional law at Columbia University, agrees with Van Alstyne but predicts that the Supreme Court will be very reluctant to overrule the legislators: “If it gets to the merits, it might well uphold such an act of Congress.”

Even an unfavorable court ruling could help Dukakis, giving him the chance to say, “See, the Republican Supreme Court is thwarting the will of the democratically elected majority. Give me four more years to have the opportunity to replace these Neanderthals on the bench.”

Historian Henry Steele Commager suggests that there is a way to bypass the constitutional entanglement altogether: “To avoid the problem, just give it the rights of a state and leave it at that,” thereby creating the congressional seats without actually admitting the district as a state, just as the now-defunct 28th amendment proposed. Representation without statehood would also avoid the graphic issue of how to place a 51st star on the flag.

Statehood is a no-lose issue for Dukakis, especially if the Massachusetts governor manages to keep it out of the campaign debate between now and November. Then, if Dukakis wins, the subject will irritate Republicans, galvanize black activists, energize congressmen and keep Jackson busy for years.

Vice President George Bush ought to draw out Dukakis on this issue right away because it could be the answer, a potentially embarrassing answer, to the old primary question: What does Jackson want? He may want what the English used to call a “rotten borough”--a district having only a few voters but entitled to send a representative to Parliament.