When the Democratic National Committee convenes for its summer meeting in Minneapolis Monday, it’ll begin discussing one of the most contentious, divisive and delicate matters consuming a party out of power: the calendar.
Chuckle as you may, the process can be (deeply) political, and little gets Democratic insiders stirred up quite like where and when to begin their presidential nominating contest. The debate is suffused with matters of race, region, class and, perhaps most significantly, the vanity of the would-be kingmakers in the states vying to kick off the 2028 primary.
There used to be little debate at all. Or at least not any that seemed to truly threaten the seemingly divine right of Iowa and New Hampshire to kick off each presidential race.
Then Iowa botched its 2020 caucus count, confirming the Democrats’ fears about party-run caucuses, and four years later, President Joe Biden personally rewrote the calendar. He torpedoed Iowa and New Hampshire (where he batted .000 in three presidential bids) and rewarded South Carolina (which revived his presidential dreams on that third and final full campaign).
Biden’s brazen attempt to marginalize anyone who dared question a going-on-82-year-old incumbent seeking reelection worked, and he avoided having to plead with the finicky voters of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Well, it will surprise absolutely nobody with any experience in presidential politics that the fickle voters, and proud leaders, of those two states expect to reclaim their first-in-the-nation role.
Let’s cut to the chase: Iowa is unlikely to return as an early state for Democrats. The 2020 experience soured many in the party on the byzantine caucuses and, just as significant, it has become too red a state with few Democrats who have the clout to return them to the front of the line.
New Hampshire is a different story, and I think it is likely to again begin the party’s nomination process in 2028.
First, the New Hampshire primary is run by the state, not the political parties. Democrats and Republicans hold their primaries on the same day, and the vote is administered by town and state officials. More importantly, as just about any Granite Stater you encounter in a Dunkin’ Donuts will tell you, there is a state law requiring New Hampshire to hold the country’s first primary. And they will keep abiding by that law.
Well, that and three bucks will get you a Dunks’ coffee. So what if there’s a state law? Why should the DNC be held captive to one (small) state insisting it should begin every campaign to elect the next president?
That brings us back to — trigger warning, Democrats — the debacle that was 2024. New Hampshire, following their law, ignored Biden’s demand and held their kickoff primary, as usual. The president didn’t show up there, but the state’s Democrats organized a write-in campaign, which he won handily. But because Biden wanted South Carolina to start the primary, New Hampshire was stripped of its delegates as punishment for going first.
Until they weren’t.
With an eye toward party unity, and recognizing New Hampshire could be competitive in the general election, the DNC restored New Hampshire’s delegates.
So the DNC is left with little leverage today. They already demonstrated once that their delegate threats are toothless. And, even if Chair Ken Martin says there’s a new sheriff in town and we mean it this time, does anybody think the party’s 2028 standard bearer wouldn’t overrule him to restore party harmony and placate a purple-blue state?
What if, you say, other states simply schedule their primaries ahead of New Hampshire’s scheduled primary?
We lived through that once already. It was 2008. Iowa and New Hampshire simply responded by “front-loading” their contests. The caucuses were held on Jan. 3d (not a typo) and the campaigns and the political press corps all celebrated New Year’s Eve in Des Moines. New Hampshire had its primary five days later.
I have no doubt that if other states attempt to leapfrog New Hampshire, they’ll respond by simply moving their primary back, even into calendar year 2027 if necessary.
As New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, told me: “I will always fight to ensure we remain first.”
There is something else going for the state’s prized first-in-the-nation status (which they’ve all but patented as #FITN) — the most powerful Democrat in South Carolina has made clear he simply wants his state to stay in the early window, not necessarily retain its role as the first nominating state.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told Dave Weigel in June that Biden alone had made South Carolina first — “we had nothing to do with being number one” — and that he was content with his state being decisive rather than merely early.
I’m told that Clyburn has conveyed the same message to party leaders in recent months, that his only goal is that South Carolina remains first-in-the-South.
Then there’s the fact that the biggest challenge New Hampshire has faced in retaining its kickoff status — it’s too white and doesn’t reflect Democrats’ diversity — is diluted if Iowa is out of the equation and is harder to litigate at a moment the party needs white voters and does not need protracted identity debates that hand Republicans there-they-go-again-with DEI fodder.
Perhaps most significant, the DNC can’t control would-be candidates voting with their feet. Look no further than Sen. Ruben Gallego — once a critic of New Hampshire’s vaunted status — showing up to address the state’s insiders at the long-running Politics and Eggs breakfast just last Friday at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
My conversations with a number of plugged-in Democrats, some DNC members and some not, suggest that this will all end with four early states from four different regions: most likely New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and a Midwestern-state-to-be-named-later. I’d bet on Michigan, in part because Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) is a forceful advocate for the state and in part because she makes a compelling argument.
“I’ll be damned if we don’t start with states that will determine not just the primary but who wins in November,” Dingell told me, arguing that the party’s candidates need to deliberate over the “same issues” they’ll be contesting in the general election.
Michigan’s challenge will be convincing the DNC members that it’s not as large as it seems and won’t merely be a television-dominated primary. This, of course, is the official, visitor’s bureau-approved calling card for the New Hampshire primary.
As Ayotte said, the Granite State’s small population size, geographic density and tradition of town hall politics offer “voters the chance to hear directly from our presidential candidates.”
Or, as New Hampshire Democratic Chair Raymond Buckley called it: “the cranky once-over that we do.”
Big states, Buckley added, “don’t allow for the living room conversations we have with candidates.”
I’ve seen these discussions over two decades and in both parties, and the median New Hampshire primary voter does bring a higher level of scrutiny in those house parties Buckley is referencing.
Complicating their argument is that the sitting president did next to no retail campaigning, held the same rallies there he held in every state and still won three New Hampshire primaries (yes, pre-Trump Republicans, I recall how fractured the anybody-but-Trump lane was in 2016).
Trump’s one-size-fits-all, minor league hockey arena method is not, however, New Hampshire’s largest impediment to reclaiming its first-in-the-nation status.
That would be New Hampshire itself.
So I end with this (unsolicited) advice for New Hampshire’s leaders: Show some humility. You’re not entitled to begin every presidential campaign. Don’t show up in Minneapolis expecting. Make your case by showing what makes New Hampshire great. Come bearing Dunkin’, not demands.
