By Jasmine Li and Anvee Bhutani

WASHINGTON -- Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's nonvoting congressional delegate and a longtime advocate for statehood, said she won't run for re-election and will leave Congress at the end of this term.

"The privilege of public service is inseparable from the responsibility to recognize when it's time to lift up the next generation of leaders," she said in a statement announcing her retirement. "For D.C. that time has come."

Norton, a Democrat, is the oldest member of the House at 88. Norton took office in 1991 and is currently in her 18th term, facing minimal challenges in the Democratic primaries or general elections in the deep blue city. Delegates like Norton can't vote on legislation, but they are able to introduce and co-sponsor bills. Much of Norton's role involves lobbying colleagues, who can in turn support legislation that benefits the District.

During her tenure, Norton won tax incentives and funding packages for the District, but her decadeslong push for statehood and full voting rights hasn't materialized. Under statehood, D.C.'s 700,000 residents would gain two senators and have a voting representative in the House.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser congratulated Norton on her retirement. "Her work embodies the unwavering resolve of a city that refuses to yield in its fight for equal representation," Bowser wrote on X.

In recent years, there were mounting concerns about Norton's age and signs of decline. Norton made several statements to reporters that she would run again this fall, which were then walked back by her office. The disclosure that she wouldn't run for another term was first disclosed over the weekend, when NOTUS reported that her campaign filed a termination report with the Federal Election Commission.

Norton was largely absent from the public eye following President Trump's federalization of D.C. police and deployment of National Guard troops to the nation's capital. She issued several written statements condemning the administration's actions and introduced resolutions to end the takeover, but made few appearances at public events or press conferences as other local officials did.

She is one of over a dozen House Democrats that have announced their retirements ahead of the 2026 midterms, including other lawmakers over the age of 80 such as Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), according to Ballotpedia.

Norton was an activist during the peak of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s. She was picked up from the airport in Jackson, Miss., in June 1963 by Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary who was murdered hours later. That August, she helped organize the March on Washington headlined by Martin Luther King Jr.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Norton organized for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and held positions at the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York City Commission on Human Rights. In 1977, she was appointed chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by President Jimmy Carter, becoming the first woman to hold the position. She taught at Georgetown University Law Center before being elected to Congress in 1990.

Write to Jasmine Li at jasmine.li@wsj.com and Anvee Bhutani at anvee.bhutani@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 27, 2026 12:09 ET (17:09 GMT)

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