When President Joe Biden endorsed South Carolina to supplant New Hampshire as the first-in the-nation primary state, Granite State Democrats promised a fight, even invoking “the nuclear option” of holding the primary in 2023. But a new proposal to get New Hampshire to fall in line may offend them even more.
The proposal? Not only should South Carolina go first, but if New Hampshire won’t acquiesce to the Democratic National Committee’s demands, Biden’s home state of Delaware should also leapfrog New Hampshire as further punishment.
But instead of getting the Granite State in line, the proposition is just further angering New Hampshire’s political elite.
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“First of all, we’re not gonna be replaced,” Neil Levesque, director of the Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, told The Daily Beast. “But if the Democrats wanna put Delaware ahead of us, then it’s another attempt by Biden’s weak presidential campaign to try to make it as advantageous as possible that he wins the nomination.”
Raymond Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told The Daily Beast that the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee gave them a deadline of Thursday to agree to comply in order “to receive a window to remain on their calendar, three days after South Carolina and on the same day as Nevada.”
The chairman was adamant that he can’t agree to the stipulations, which would involve the Republican legislature having to repeal New Hampshire’s state law enshrining the first-in-the-nation primary into the state constitution, the Granite State’s long-standing trump card in early primary state squabbles.
The immediate problem, as Buckley pointed out, is that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu has refused to sign any such bill, and both chambers of the state legislature are controlled by Republicans.
“We don’t have the power to change that,” Buckley said. “It’s a Republican governor with Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate.”
“It’s not out of arrogance, we’re just trying to explain what the situation is,” he said.
On Thursday morning, Buckley responded to the DNC in a letter, as did the governor, who released a separate letter addressed to Donna Soucy, the leader for the Democrats in the 24 member state Senate.
Buckley urged the rules committee to “enact a calendar that meets the goals of greater diversity earlier in our process while not putting the fortunes of Democrats in any state at risk.”
Sununu was much more forceful.
“We will not be blackmailed. We will not be threatened, and we will not give up," Sununu wrote, telling Soucy he would not agree to the DNC’s conditions either.
As some Democrats in New Hampshire have pointed out, the last time Delaware came for the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation crown, it didn’t end well for Biden’s home state.
Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s secretary of state for over four decades until his retirement last year, called Delaware’s 1996 bid to switch from a caucus to a primary a “depraved version of a kangaroo straw poll.” Gardner promised Delaware would regret the decision.
Should the Democratic National Committee decide to punish New Hampshire for not complying with the new rules and calendar for 2024 by removing them from the second slot on the same day as Nevada, the Blue Hen state could be back in the mix again, but at its own peril.
Only Maryland had another competitive bid during the application process last year, with Connecticut’s application considered such a mess that it wouldn’t be worth revisiting, according to sources familiar with conversations within the DNC. With Maryland’s proximity to the nation’s capital, as well as its pricey media market, Granite State operatives have been worried that Delaware would be the favorite to replace New Hampshire in the primary calendar.
With South Carolina already replacing Iowa as top dog in the 2024 calendar, veterans of the New Hampshire primary are aghast at the possibility of Biden’s home state usurping them, even under the next cycle’s one-time deal, where Republicans would still keep Iowa and New Hampshire first.
“So, what do I think about it? I think it’s clear the cake was being baked a long time ago, where the White House just figured out that, OK, we can’t put Delaware first because that’d be too obvious for what they’re trying to do,” Levesque said. “So they put in a state that they get a big endorsement from and they can win [South Carolina], and second or third, they'll put in Delaware.”
The demands have rubbed stewards of the primary like Levesque the wrong way, particularly when it comes to President Biden and what he along with several others described as the DNC’s “poison pill.”
“And the further evidence to that was the fact that they said New Hampshire can go with Nevada second, after South Carolina, but only if a Republican governor sends them a letter saying that they were gonna repeal the law,” Levesque continued, briefly interrupting himself with a hearty guffaw. “How outrageous is that? I mean, talk about a poison pill.”
One longtime presidential campaign operative described the behind the scenes chatter around the DNC’s moves as increasingly tense, with allies to Biden dismayed at how they’ve been treated.
“We’re at loggerheads with the national party, and to some extent the president,” the campaign veteran said, adding that Granite State power brokers may keep their powder dry if Biden ultimately doesn’t run.
The scuttlebutt around Delaware emerging as the alternative to New Hampshire has also raised more than a few eyebrows, with one Democratic strategist questioning the optics for the White House.
“I don’t know what value that adds. It’s not a demographically diverse state, it’s not a significantly cheaper media market,” the strategist said.
“I don’t know if the University of Delaware is gonna become the new Saint Anselm, which is probably the best analogy, but I just don’t see the point,” they continued. “There’s nothing to this that makes this more valuable, and the tourism argument for early primary states is overblown. The TV one is the strongest, because it’s the most sustained form of revenue for these states.”
Buckley said he’s worried the DNC has opened “a potential Pandora’s box that they hadn’t, up until now, really thought through.”
Levesque didn’t hold back.
“They’re worried he’s weak. They’re worried about it. They should be. If his numbers drop towards the next year and a strong Democrat were to all the sudden come to New Hampshire… It could be a great embarrassment to the White House,” the host of the influential “Politics & Eggs” event said. “Party bosses don’t like New Hampshire because they can’t control the situation.”
Levesque mentioned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as potential candidates who would be harmed by this calendar if it holds beyond 2024.
While Buckley said he wants the New Hampshire Democrats to support President Biden as much as possible, he described the primary reshuffle as “not helpful” to the state’s all Democratic congressional delegation, nor to efforts to reclaim the statehouse in 2024.
Buckley also didn’t rule out the DNC ultimately booting New Hampshire from its early spot, outlining a worst-case scenario where the Granite State would still hold its primary first, abiding by state law, but with an unsanctioned Democratic contest that would become a sideshow.
Representatives at the White House and DNC did not return requests for comment.
Buckley played out a hypothetical scenario where “Joe Smith, the local fisherman in Maine that filled his name on the form, won the New Hampshire primary” the same night a GOP candidate would get a decisive victory.
“Is that really a good story for how we're going to start the 2024 election?” Buckley asked.
While some of the New Hampshire operative class still holds reservations about whether Biden will actually run, Levesque said the recent turn of events had convinced him otherwise.
“He’s definitely running again,” Levesque said. “The evidence is the DNC is trying to cook the books. If he wasn’t running again, they wouldn’t be doing this.”
