VIDEO: Senator Slotkin Commits to Making DC Statehood a Top Priority

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeannette O’Connor, [email protected]

“You have my commitment that I’m a believer. I will vote again and again and again.”

Washington, DC (August 19, 2026) – At a “Kick Out Corruption Tour” event in St. Louis yesterday, Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said that she will vote “again and again and again” to support DC statehood, and that “it is the epitome of ridiculous that DC residents don’t have any representation at the federal level.”

Slotkin’s comments came in response to a question from a DC resident who traveled to the event with DC Vote as part of its new national campaign, 51 on the Agenda. The campaign takes the fight for DC statehood on the road, pressing members of Congress and candidates across the country to explain what they will actually do to make DC the 51st state.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.

“Senator Slotkin understands that support for DC statehood must mean more than saying you’re with us — it requires a commitment to act,” said Amy Vruno, Executive Director of DC Vote. “The American people deserve to know which elected officials are prepared to take meaningful action to admit Washington, DC as the 51st state. We’re grateful to Senator Slotkin for making that commitment publicly, and we intend to ask leaders across the country to do the same.”

Nearly 700,000 DC residents pay federal taxes, serve in the military and contribute to the life of this country, yet they have no senators and no voting representation in Congress. As the DC Vote participant told Slotkin, the need to expand and protect the right to representation is particularly urgent at a time when voting rights and minority representation are under attack.

Slotkin agreed, placing DC statehood within that broader struggle for voting rights. “Between what the Supreme Court has done to the Voting Rights Act and what states are trying to do right now, particularly to minority representation, it fits into a bigger kind of systemic problem we’re having right now, where the federal government and the Supreme Court are trying to take away the hard-fought gains of minority voters across the country,” she said.

Senator Slotkin is a co-sponsor of the most recent bill for DC statehood and voted for statehood as a member of the House. This is her first known public statement about DC statehood as a member of the U.S. Senate.