As this election cycle finally comes to a close, all eyes inside the Beltway will undoubtedly be glued to their phones and watching “the most important seat on the battlefield,” as Paul Strauss said: the shadow senator from the District of Columbia.

Strauss was joking, even though he takes his (unpaid) job as one of Washington’s two shadow senators very seriously. As a shadow senator, he is an elected official charged with defending statehood in Washington, a position he has held since 1997.

“In the Senate, you’re only really taken seriously when you’ve been there for a few decades,” said Strauss, the next candidate for election in 2026. “I was sent there to do a job that takes more time than I hoped I would…but I’m not going to give up.

For new Washington DC residents, and even some older ones, filling out their ballots can seem repetitive and confusing. In addition to voting for DC’s delegate to the House of Representatives – a position Eleanor Holmes Norton has held since 1991 – they will be asked to choose a “United States Senator” and a “United States Representative” this year.

These positions constitute the D.C. shadow delegation, which began in 1990 with the express purpose of promoting statehood and, if Congress grants it, establishing a real congressional delegation. It is a process used by certain territories before becoming states, like Tennessee and Alaska. Currently, Puerto Rico also has a shadow delegation.

While Norton and other delegates have limited power in Congress, shadow senators and representatives have none, since they are not official members. They do not get an office, committee positions, access to speak or votes.

On Tuesday, Democrat Ankit Jain will likely be elected to join Strauss as DC’s other shadow senator, alongside incumbent shadow Rep. Oye Owolewa. About 90 percent of DC voters vote Democratic in most years, and Jain and Owolewa’s Republican opponents don’t actually support statehood, which would make their ex-officio positions on the commission embarrassing, to say the least. on DC statehood. The delegation shares an office at City Hall with one full-time employee and a handful of part-time aides.

Jain, a voting rights attorney at FairVote, likened this position to that of “elected D.C. lobbyists for our issues before the U.S. Senate.”

“This position is basically our primary advocate for statehood in Washington and against efforts by Congress to overturn our local laws and interfere in our local affairs,” Jain said.

Jain is running for a seat held by Michael Donald Brown, who decided not to run for re-election after facing criticism for not doing more to prevent Congress from undo changes to DC’s criminal code in 2023. While DC has its own mayor and city council who write laws, Congress has 30 to 60 days to consider a law and can block it via a joint resolution signed by the president.

To advocates of local control like Strauss and Jain, this congressional “oversight” looks like a blatant insult to the ideals of democracy.

“I sincerely believe in the power of democracy to solve the problems of this country,” Jain said. “The same democratic rights as all American citizens…all of us here in Washington are deprived of those rights. »

The 2023 incident particularly angered Jain. D.C. advocates made principled arguments, he said, about how unfair it would be to people who live thousands of miles from Washington to overturn the decision of the District’s elected officials. But that didn’t convince congressional Republicans, who he said were more interested in scoring political points against supposedly soft-on-crime liberals, nor Democrats in swing districts who feared these attacks do not stick in their minds.

“I think actually members of Congress are less moved by that kind of (principled) argument than by… ‘What would voting for (DC) say about me?’” Jain said.

If elected, Jain said he would take a more pragmatic and strategic approach to convincing Congress to stay out of D.C.’s internal affairs.

But that job has become more difficult over the years, Strauss said, as politics has become more polarized. “Before, there was a lot more mutual respect from both parties. When I got there in the 90s, even Republican senators were always willing to meet with you in person,” he said. “A very conservative guy, Sam Brownback from Kansas, for example, chaired the D.C. subcommittee (of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee), but he always made sure that if there was a problem about from DC or a hearing, I had the chance to participate…even if we didn’t agree.

When Republicans are in power these days, Strauss said, their job is more defensive in nature — trying to convince them not to reduce Washington’s autonomy — than offensive, that is, winning the state status.

“Sometimes you have to be proactive. Sometimes you’re reacting to decisions made by people who live in other places but who feel that they can control the District of Columbia, that somehow it’s their destiny,” he said. Strauss said. “It gets difficult in these environments.”