Eleanor Holmes Norton joins local leaders to speak out against the Congressional continuing resolution in March 2025. “She just happened to be there when Fannie Lou Hamer ended up put in jail in Winona, Mississippi that summer,” Smith told The Informer. And so she had paid her dues, you might say, and earned her spurs,” Smith told The Informer. Sheila Bunn, a D.C. politico and former Norton staffer, told The Informer that Norton had confidence that bolstered her ability to negotiate with political colleagues and nemeses alike. “It has to be within driving distance [but] under her tenure, that has not been enforced,” Freeman told The Informer.