In February, the Democratic National Committee voted to change the order of its primary, upending decades of political tradition, and really upsetting New Hampshire in the process.
The change to the calendar isn’t final yet, so New Hampshire’s leaders, including Sen. Maggie Hassan, Secretary of State David Scanlan, and Gov. Chris Sununu, are wasting no time voicing their strong opposition to it—pointing out that it has been enshrined in state law since 1920 that New Hampshire maintain its spot as the first state in the nation to hold a primary.
But it’s a little more complicated than that: New Hampshire truly was first until 1972, when Iowa side-swept the Granite State by holding the first national presidential caucus that calendar year, which technically allowed New Hampshire to claim that it was still “first in the nation” for primaries. (Yes, it’s confusing.)
The new primary schedule would put South Carolina first, while tying New Hampshire and Nevada at second, followed by Georgia and Michigan. (Since the DNC booted Iowa from the No. 1 spot, it will need to decide a new date for that state’s storied caucuses, hopefully with no glitches this time around.)
The calendar change was recommended by President Biden, and would not affect the Republican schedule.
“How dare he? How dare he think he can influence New Hampshire that way? It’s just outrageous,” said Laurie Jasper, a member of the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women, to NBC News, of Biden’s masterminding.
In a letter to the DNC, Biden pushed for this new primary schedule because it would diversify the voters that get a say in the early nomination process. It probably also helps that in 2020, South Carolina decisively revived Biden’s presidential campaign.
New Hampshire, with a 93 percent white electorate, is arguably not the most representative state of the U.S. electorate. Yet Hassan, along with other New Hampshire elected officials, argued in an op-ed in the Boston Globe that pushing up a more diverse state in the primaries didn’t need to come at the expense of pushing down New Hampshire. “These did not have to be mutually exclusive,” the officials wrote. They also argued that having New Hampshire and Nevada share the same primary date would “hamstring candidates,” and warned that “Republicans have already started blaming Democratic leadership for New Hampshire losing its first-in-the-nation primary and touting the GOP as the only party that cares about Granite Staters.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has been more blunt. “So now the national Democrat Party is trying to change our state law. If it weren’t so serious, it would be an absolute joke,” he told local TV station WMUR.
New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas also told WMUR: “What happened with the DNC was a total betrayal by Joe Biden,” adding that Granite State Democrats “were not done fighting” to keep New Hampshire first.
Iowa, it should be said, is not so happy either. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds accused Democrats of abandoning rural America and denying Iowans a voice in the presidential nominating process. “It’s disappointing that there wasn’t much of a debate, but that’s what happens when a ruling elite gives orders from the top down,” she tweeted in December.
But New Hampshire is perhaps facing an even greater existential crisis, having spent decades staking its identity on being the leaders of each primary election season every four years, which conveniently forces candidates to spend a lot of time and money in the state.
“This is the most outrageous maneuver, and so blatantly transparent. It really shows what the president’s true colors are,” said Neil Levesque, head of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, to NBC News. “He’s a candidate, potentially, who is trying to rig the election in a way that best suits him.”
And yet, all of this steam could be for nothing. Each state involved in the Democratic primary-schedule shuffle will need to comply in order for it to stick. So far, Michigan has moved to change its primary according to the DNC’s plan, but Georgia and New Hampshire aren’t complying as of yet. They have until June 3 to pass necessary legislation to change state laws to make the DNC’s wish come true.
