Make Greater D.C. Again? GOP embraces bid to add Arlington and Alexandria to the capital

Countries often go to war over contested territory. But D.C. could theoretically gain some 30 square miles of additional land under a bloodless, out-of-left-field scenario that has been circulating over the last week among some prominent Republicans.

The idea is, at least in theory, simple: Take Arlington County and the City of Alexandria, both of which were part of the original 100-square-mile capital that was created with land gifted by Virginia and Maryland, and return them to D.C. The proposal would undo what’s known as the 1847 retrocession, when residents in Arlington and Alexandria – frustrated over a lack of attention to their problems in Congress and angered by the city’s ban on slave-trading – decided to rejoin Virginia. 

The effort to reclaim the District’s renegade territories was originally pushed by President Howard Taft in the early 1900s (he wanted to recreate what was called Greater D.C.) and has more recently circulated as jokes on social media (under the banner of “Recreate the Diamond”). But it has never been seriously entertained by the city’s leadership – much less by Arlington or Alexandria, whose residents would suddenly lose their own voting representation in Congress.

Nonetheless, the idea, clunkily known re-retrocession, was recently revived by national Republicans who have been frustrated with Northern Virginia’s blue tilt, especially following a recent statewide redistricting referendum that will likely benefit Democrats.

Re-retrocession “will not only neutralize the president’s political opponents’ move to stack Congress against him – thus protecting him from another likely sham impeachment – but, most importantly, it will save a great number of red Virginians from having their votes canceled out by deep blue D.C.-adjacent liberals,” wrote Chad Mizelle, a former high-level official in the U.S. Department of Justice, in a recent op-ed published on Fox News’ website.

Conservatives are floating two approaches to re-retroceding Arlington and Alexandria. 

Over on Capitol Hill, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Georgia) introduced a bill last week that would declare that the 1847 retrocession was unconstitutional, and undo it. “The Constitution never authorized Congress to carve pieces out of the federal District and hand them back to a state,” he said in a statement.

Mizelle proposed having Trump instead issue an executive order “declaring the slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional, triggering certain legal action, and allowing the courts to finally weigh in on whether the county of Arlington and the city of Alexandria in fact properly belong to the District of Columbia,” he wrote. A website entitled the American Capital Project has cropped up making the same argument (tagline: “Make D.C. Square Again”).

Mizelle didn’t respond to a message from The 51st, and the American Capital Project doesn’t have any contact information on its website.

It actually isn’t the first time that this has come up in recent memory. During Trump’s first presidency, the D.C. GOP floated the idea as part of a complex play for statehood, but it never went anywhere. (Discussion of retroceding much of D.C. to Democratic Maryland tends to come up a bit more often, but has similarly been a nonstarter.)  

Reactions to the Republicans' new push to make D.C. square again (or recreate the diamond, depending on your preference) have ranged from bemusement to outrage, with a dose of political reality thrown in the middle. 

“It’s not going to happen,” Matthew Hurtt, the chairman of the Arlington County Republican Party, told The 51st. “I just don’t have time to entertain hypotheticals.” 

“Not a chance of this,” Virginia-based conservative radio host John Fredericks tweeted in response to McCormick’s bill. Even former Trump advisor Steve Bannon seemed aghast at the idea. “You’re breaking up my beloved Commonwealth of Virginia,” he said on his podcast last week.

At the same time, the proposal picked up the support from prominent conservative leaders, including Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation. “With the Democrats’ power-grab succeeding in Virginia, this should be the next move: return Arlington to D.C.,” he wrote on X, linking to Mizelle’s op-ed. “Our side must learn to play hardball with these Leftists.”  

On the opposite side, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Virginia), who would see a majority of his congressional district returned to D.C., called McCormick’s bill an "embarrassing legislative tantrum… and a stupid waste of time.” (McCormick responded by saying Beyer could run to be D.C.’s mayor.) Matt de Ferranti, the chair of the Arlington County Board, calls it an “unserious proposal.” And Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins pointed out that it would immediately deny residents voting representation in Congress. 

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous and a huge distraction that someone would feel that in a democracy, where people are supposed to be able to voice their opinions, their perspectives by voting, that people would decide, ‘Well, if you disagree with me… I’m just going to rewrite how this democracy is supposed to work, and I’m going to silence the voices of those who disagree,’” she said in a video. “That’s not happening here in Alexandria. We’re not going to let that happen.”

But what if, somehow, it did? 

D.C. would pick up some 400,000 new residents, pushing the city’s population above the 1 million mark. Those new residents would largely be wealthy and white; Arlington County has a median household income of $140,000, and 72 percent of its current residents are white, roughly on par with Ward 3. 

D.C. would suddenly gain its first official mall (Pentagon City) and airport (National), a second Costco, another four-year university, the international diversity (and food offerings) of Columbia Pike, the historic charm of Old Town Alexandria, and Amazon’s HQ2 – which, ironically enough, was won by Arlington County in 2018 after a national search that included D.C. among its unsuccessful contenders. 

The move would be a jolt to D.C.’s economy, and a hit to Virginia’s – Arlington County accounts for six percent of the commonwealth’s overall GDP, after all. When this same idea was suggested in the early 1940s, the Washington Post reported that its chances were unlikely since “those 30-odd square miles on the other side of the Potomac which used to be part of the National Capital are too valuable to the Old Dominion’s tax coffers to be given up without a struggle.”

It’s also unclear whether it would accomplish Republicans’ goal of making Virginia more red in statewide elections. Even with Arlington County and Alexandria’s votes removed from the tallies, most election outcomes wouldn’t have changed – and that includes the recent redistricting referendum. 

“After more than 3 million Virginians voted in a free and fair election, Republicans are retaliating by trying to disenfranchise many of them, including me,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who lives in Old Town Alexandria, said in a statement. 

Hurtt, the Arlington County Republican leader, understands why the idea may have caught on with some Republicans. But he’s not expecting to have to change his driver’s license anytime soon.

“I suspect this is popular among Republicans outside the Beltway because it allows them to scapegoat a region of the state and say, ‘Look, we would win statewide if not for Arlington and Alexandria,” he says. “But if we’re talking hypotheticals, I don’t think West Virginia legitimately exited. It’s an interesting exercise in political science, but it’s not for the ballot box.”