A vote for a vote for D.C.

The House approved a bill Thursday giving the District of Columbia its first voting U.S. representative, a step hailed as a moral victory and denounced as a constitutional travesty.

Race and disenfranchisement permeated the unusually feisty debate, with lawmakers snapping at each other on the floor.

After the bill passed, supporters held a giddy news conference at which Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s nonvoting member, called the bipartisan effort “a 206-year labor of love,” citing the number of years district residents have been without a vote in Congress.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said the bill corrected a historical injustice. “The United States of America is the only representative democracy that does not afford the citizens of its capital a voice,” he said. “It is wrong morally.”

Opponents, such as Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), argued that the bill would not stand up to legal review. “I believe this bill to be unconstitutional,” Price declared. “The place to decide this is in the court.”

The 241--177 vote split roughly along party lines, with 22 Republicans breaking ranks to support the measure, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista). Six Democrats voted against the bill.

In a horse trade to account for the addition of a new member from the overwhelmingly Democratic capital, the bill gives GOP-leaning Utah a fourth congressional seat, increasing House membership to 437.

The vote came almost a month after Democrats pulled the bill when Republicans tried to attach a provision that would reverse gun controls in the district. The city’s 31-year-old handgun ban was recently struck down by a federal appeals court and is on its way to a Supreme Court showdown.

The Democratic leadership brought the bill back this week, in the shadow of the Virginia Tech massacre, but blocked Republicans from adding any unrelated measures. That step left Republicans furious, but their denunciations did nothing to change the situation.

Opponents stressed that they endorsed representation for the district, but believe that the Constitution limits House members specifically to the states. The solution, they said, was to pass a constitutional amendment or have the district join the state of Maryland -- the land it is on was originally carved from the state.

Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) said that since he spent “more time here than I do in California,” he could say D.C. residents were ably represented.

When he tried to interrupt Holmes Norton’s reply, she refused to let him. “I will not yield, sir,” she shot back. “The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding. I yield you no time. You’ve had your say.”

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) asked how Republicans could push guns for the district over voting rights. “What kind of system says the right to have a 9-millimeter outweighs the right to vote?” he asked.

He was among several African American lawmakers who talked about disenfranchisement in the majority black city. Holmes Norton, her voice cracking at one point, recalled her grandfather was a slave and appealed to Republicans, as members of the party of Abraham Lincoln, to back the bill.

In 1801, Congress created Washington, D.C., as a federal enclave, deciding not to declare it a state.

Ever since, its residents have had an unusual brand of citizenship. The 515,000 residents pay federal taxes, serve on federal juries, cast votes in presidential elections and fight in wars -- without a voting member in Congress. The official D.C. license plate includes the historic complaint: “Taxation without representation.”

Past efforts to empower D.C. residents have come up against the partisan reality that Republicans were unlikely to vote to add a safe Democratic seat for the district, a Democratic stronghold.

The issue languished until Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) forged a compromise. Davis, who represents the district’s Virginia suburbs, proposed giving a House vote each to D.C. and the largely Republican state of Utah to “take the partisanship out of this.”

The 2000 census showed Utah with a population gain just short of enough to give it a fourth member of Congress.

D.C. Vote, a lobbying group, worked to corral votes for the compromise, especially from Republicans. Its chief advocate: former New York congressman and GOP vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp.

“I see this as a civil rights issue,” Kemp said in an interview. “We can’t send the residents of D.C. to Iraq to fight for the right [of Iraqis] to vote without allowing the residents of this city to elect a member of Congress.”

One of his recent converts is Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who spoke in support of the bill. “It is inconceivable to me that our founders would have accepted a denial of representation in perpetuity,” Pence said.

Holmes Norton and Davis predicted success in the Senate and dismissed reports that President Bush might veto the bill.

nicole.gaouette@latimes.com

johanna.neuman@latimes.com