My apologies if I missed it above, but Wheaton College in Norton, Ma (not the one in Illinois) is worth a look. Very flexible curriculum and generous merit money. There is also a regional grant for New Englanders.
Suburban campus, accessible to Providence and Boston.
Best of luck!
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Saw @AustenNut 's mention of TCNJ and it reminded me that Rutgers New Brunswick also has a very strong political science program with their Eagleton Institute of Politics. It’s probably more NJ-focused, but you might find it interesting, at least to understand what different types of programs are out there.
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Trinity is a good call out. Great school with lots of internships at the Mayor’s and Governor’s offices as well as the State House. Differentiated experience for those interested in policy and political science.
Check out Denison. It’s reachy, maybe a 20% chance, but I think they offer most accepted students scholarships, or at least a significant proportion, so it could hit budget. They have a really interesting focus in their political science major called the Lugar Program, and are close enough to Columbus that you could reasonably intern at the State House.
Will also second the various suggestions about your art; it both counts as an EC and can help your application.
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Suffolk University is right next to the State House and it has all the majors/minors you are thinking about. There are excellent opportunities for internships or special projects right next door. It is definitely city living though, but the area is nice. If you are sure about the law thing, they have a legal studies major or minor and a BS/JD 3+3 program.
I’d put is as a likely (with merit) for you.
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Basically setting you up for a letdown when all of your admissions are revealed afterward to be too expensive. That they are divorced could complicate their cooperation with each other on funding your college (and some colleges require both of their finances for financial aid).
I find a lot of parents just don’t even know where to start that conversation. If you like data and seeing everything laid out, you can create a spread sheet with all of your schools and things you need/want to keep track of. I’d also add a COA (Cost of attendance) column, possibility for merit, and anything else to do with cost. Go over this with your parents and when they see it all listed out in black and white, perhaps they will be able to get their heads around the fact that you need a budget.
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I think this is a good concept for filtering your list, and I tend to think there are three obvious things to consider along these lines.
One is colleges in the DC orbit.
Another is Jesuit colleges. They just tend to be super plugged into politics and many have very good locations in major cities. I note Georgetown is an example of a college in both these first two categories, and not surprisingly it is a great option for people with such interests.
And a third is colleges in or near major state capitals. And actually, if you include DC as a quasi-state, then Georgetown checks this box too, but as others have pointed out many colleges in or near other state capitals also do some sort of program in DC for interested students.
Your original list (including your consideration of GW, and it was fine to eliminate it for the reasons you gave) did a good job with DC area schools. But as people are suggesting, there are more colleges you could consider down the Jesuit path or the state capital path.
But you don’t necessarily have to! It just will given you more options to consider.
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I agree with this. You may find this post helpful in terms of how to include merit aid and loans within that financial picture in the spreadsheet. This aggregator has a lot of information on the average merit aid packages and the percentage who receive them; alternatively, you can look at section H2 of a school’s Common Data Set to locate this information.
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I don’t thing Georgetown meets the budget.
Every time someone posts this list I think about…but have never before now pointed out…Brown discontinued the public policy major a couple of years ago so it surprised me that it has remained on this list. I’m sure you can still get a great public policy - esque education there
- from a Brown 90’s era public policy grad
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it’s funny you mention that because there’s actually a conspiracy theory at my school that we’re blacklisted from brown. no one who has applied in the previous 5ish years has gotten in, while applicants from a nearby hs with comparable stats have had no problem 
the situation flips at upenn. thank you for the reply!
I agree with the recommendations for Dickinson and Macalester. Check and see if Dickinson favors demonstrated interest.
Keep in mind that many schools have something similar to a semester in DC or opportunities for summer internships so that is an argument to consider places outside DC/Philly, etc that have opportunities for such programs.
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Oh right, that is a critical observation of course.
The point I was trying to make (and could have made more clearly) is that the OP can look for more affordable colleges that share some of its virtues for someone with the OP’s interests and goals.