In the 2020 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump and candidate Joe Biden had big issues to debate. Since his election, Biden has been mostly quiet about statehood for the District of Columbia. In 2016, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton publicly supported D.C. statehood; Trump did not.

In 2024, Kamala Harris’s “Joy Campaign” is already onboard with the “joy” and “justice” of making D.C. a state. It is political and journalistic malpractice to use justice as an argument for D.C. statehood.

During Harris’s political convention in Chicago, D.C.’s joyful Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that Harris “will work … to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state.” It is unwise for Harris’s campaign to commit to D.C. statehood.

Before D.C. becomes a state, Bowser must improve her management of the city’s operations. Maryland’s U.S. Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks might agree. Alsobrooks is in the news because she defrauded D.C.’s citizens out of thousands of tax dollars. Good training for a U.S. senator, right?

Alsobrooks claimed Homestead Exemption (tax deductions) on at least two of her homes she did not qualify for. When CNN broke this news, Alsobrooks was contrite. She was sorry to learn that she had gotten the tax breaks from the D.C. government.

After Alsobrooks courageously agreed to repay the D.C. government, Maryland voters learned that she is $8,000 in debt to her homeowner’s association. She forgot to pay her HOA dues, she said.

Some critics are calling Alsobrooks a tax cheat and a deadbeat. In its endorsement, the Washington Post, whose motto is “Democracy Dies in the Dark,” said Alsobrooks is the best possible candidate to be Maryland’s next U.S. senator. Democracy Dies in the D.C. Swamp.

The Alsobrooks case publicly demonstrates how poorly managed the future state of Washington, D.C., is. There are many other examples.

In September, the FBI arrested D.C. Councilmember Trayon White Sr. for taking bribes from companies in return for city contracts. The D.C. Council, to its credit, stripped White of his leadership roles. In 2018, White posted a video claiming that Jews control the weather. He eventually issued an apology. White supports D.C. statehood.

D.C. has an Advisory Neighborhood commissioner system of elected representatives who advise the government about public concerns in the city’s 46 neighborhoods. D.C. has 345 commissioners. In September, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Clayton Rosenberg admitted to stealing an estimated $1.7 million from COVID-19 relief programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses.

After a federal judge sentenced him to five years in prison, Rosenberg was contrite. He said he was sick with COVID when he stole the money. Rosenberg wants you to know it was COVID that stole the money. “I’m not that person,” D.C. Statehood supporter Rosenberg said. The judge was not convinced.

The D.C. government allows incarcerated Advisory Neighborhood commissioners to represent the 2,000 resident-inmates in the D.C. prison. Their issues include access to D.C. services and resources to improve their inmate experience. If D.C. were a state, the resident-inmate population would have access to greater services and resources. Ergo, D.C.’s incarcerated community wants statehood.

In December 2021, a D.C. elementary school librarian reportedly forced third graders to re-enact Holocaust skits “because the Jews ruined Christmas.” D.C.’s Superintendent of Education was surprised to learn that the librarian had a criminal record in New Jersey.

The important lesson here is that D.C. does not conduct background investigations into its applicants for public schoolteachers. If they had statehood tax dollars, they might be able to conduct background investigations on teachers. Maybe.

In 2020, a 9-year-old boy was among the dead in a fire at an illegal hotel in D.C. Though residents filed complaints with the city about the dangerous building, D.C. officials failed to inspect it. City officials say that if they had more resources (tax dollars), they could do their jobs.

In 2019, the FBI arrested a D.C. government official for selling fentanyl from his office. A federal judge sentenced the man to 63 months in prison.

Those who support D.C. statehood should insist on better management of D.C.’s city government operations. Harris would look foolish if she endorsed D.C. statehood. If she did, I suspect it would be a massive transfer of “political joy” to former president Donald Trump.