With New House Seat, Utah Doesn’t Need to Team With D.C.

Supporters of the District of Columbia’s long-fought effort to get its own member of Congress found what they thought was a perfect political opportunity a few years back: Team up with Utah, which was still cranky about missing a new member by about 80 residents.

But that pairing — a team effort to add two seats that came close to winning — is now no more.

With news Tuesday that Utah would land a fourth congressional seat because of population growth, the need for the state’s officials to buddy up with the District of Columbia is over.

Utah was a great partner, mainly because of supportive state leaders, federal representatives and the state’s own driving need for another seat, said Ilir Zherka, the executive director of DC Vote who helped craft the deal in the mid-2000s. But he said Tuesday he was on the lookout for a new interested state, one that also missed out on a seat and would want to join the cause of ending what DC Vote calls taxation without representation for the district’s 600,000 residents.

“It does appear that it won’t be Utah” that the district pairs with, Zherka said.

The previous D.C.-Utah measure would have handed both a new seat in a temporarily expanded House and made a political compromise because one seat (the District’s) would likely be held by a Democrat and the other (Utah’s) would likely be held by the GOP.

For now, Utah will claim its new member of Congress in 2012, while the District of Columbia hunts for another willing partner.

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