After more than 70 years of trouble, the Democratic Party is done with New Hampshire’s presidential primary.
The Granite State will head to the polls on Jan. 23 in the 28th edition of its presidential primary nominating contest.
President Joe Biden is conspicuously absent from the New Hampshire ballot.
Instead, his supporters are asking voters to elect him in a write-in campaign.
In October 2023, President Biden didn’t file to appear on the ballot in New Hampshire. Instead, the Democratic National Committee christened the South Carolina presidential primary, to be held on Feb. 3, as the first in the nation.
The DNC’s decision to demote New Hampshire is more than seven decades in the making. The Granite State has dumped two incumbent Democrat presidents since it began its presidential primary in 1916.
In 1952, it voted for delegates committed to Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee over President Harry Truman.
That vote proved the unpopularity of the incumbent president and led the Democratic Party to select former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson as its candidate in the general election.
Stevenson lost to Dwight Eisenhower in a landslide.
In 1968, another unpopular incumbent, former President Lyndon Johnson, left his name off the New Hampshire ballot, forcing his supporters to mount a write-in campaign. President Johnson almost lost the primary to Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.).
That performance, and the subsequent entrance of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy, led President Johnson to exit the race.
The New Hampshire vote was the prelude to an incredibly turbulent 1968 for Democrats, including the June assassination of Mr. Kennedy and the nomination of incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention. The party ultimately lost the presidency to Republican President Richard Nixon.
And more recent events haven’t healed the wounds of the past.
In 2020, after an embarrassing finish in a disputed Iowa caucus, President Biden finished in fifth place in New Hampshire with 8 percent of the vote.
In the state’s 2016 primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) crushed the eventual Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by a margin of 60 percent to 38 percent.
War by Correspondence
The DNC’s move to ditch New Hampshire’s primary occurred in 2022 after its Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to make South Carolina its first primary state.“Too often over the past 50 years, candidates have dropped out or had their candidacies marginalized by the press and pundits because of poor performances in small states early in the process before voters of color cast a vote,” President Biden wrote.
New Hampshire officially rejected the DNC’s demand in November 2023 when it moved its primary date ahead of the DNC’s preferred South Carolina election.
“Jan. 23 is a non-binding presidential preference event and is meaningless,” the DNC letter said. “The NHDP and presidential candidates should take all steps possible not to participate. No delegates or alternates shall be apportioned based on the results of the January 23, 2024 event.”
The order says that by calling the Granite State’s Democratic Primary “meaningless,” the Democratic Party “violates New Hampshire voter suppression laws.”
“Nothing has changed,” Mr. Buckley wrote. “We look forward to seeing a great Democratic voter turnout on Jan. 23.”
Earlier Efforts to Move Out
The latest fracas over the primary isn’t the first time the Democrats have tried to move the date of New Hampshire’s primary. Previous efforts included individuals who were, or would become, leaders of the Democratic Party.Bill Gardner, a Democrat and the man who served as New Hampshire’s secretary of state for decades, recalled that long history, concluding that “the struggle continues.”
In 1969, a young Harry Reid, then a member of Nevada’s state assembly, was involved in the effort to pass a presidential primary bill that would have allowed the state to go first. The bill was vetoed.
In 2015, Mr. Reid, by that point the minority leader of the Senate, attacked New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary status again.
“You go to New Hampshire, there are not any minorities there, and nobody lives there,“ Mr. Reid said during a Washington Post panel. ”It’s a place that does not demonstrate what America is all about, for a number of reasons.”
As recently as 2021, then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, signed a law to move its primary ahead of those of Iowa and New Hampshire. At the time, the AP reported that Mr. Reid, then retired from the Senate, was a key figure involved behind the scenes.
And then there was Nancy Pelosi.
Before she was even a congresswoman, Ms. Pelosi was host committee chair for the 1984 Democratic National Convention in her home city of San Francisco. The daughter of the former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., Ms. Pelosi had also chaired the California Democratic Party.
In 1983, the Democratic Party ended up in a similar standoff with New Hampshire over the timing of its primary. The state wanted to move its primary to a date before Vermont’s presidential preference poll, which had been set for the same date—March 6, 1984—as New Hampshire’s primary.
In October 1983, Ms. Pelosi traveled to New Hampshire and attempted to persuade officials there to give ground. But by that point, its position at the start of primary season had been enshrined in a state statute.
“She came to my office. I told her that I’m following the law,” Mr. Gardner recalled.
Are The Democrats Gone For Good?
Observers in New Hampshire have said they are concerned that the Democratic Party’s official break with New Hampshire in 2024 will have lasting consequences for the state’s primary.“That’s why we have this write-in campaign. That’s why Democrats are taking it seriously. That’s why the Biden campaign can’t actively come out and say they support this,” Mr. Smith said.
“Trust me, they are supporting it. They’re watching it very carefully. There’s been quite a bit of money and time invested in this write-in campaign on behalf of Biden.”
Average Granite Staters involved with the write-in campaign said they believe that the DNC is right to point out that New Hampshire holds inordinate power over the presidential nominating process.
John Grady of Merrimack, New Hampshire, said he thinks the DNC is doing the right thing because the state’s demographics don’t match those of the rest of the United States.
New Hampshire politicians love the first-in-the-nation primary because it “boosts their ego,” Mr. Grady told The Epoch Times.
Micha Dillge, who moved to New Hampshire from Chicago, said letting New Hampshire do most of the work is fundamentally undemocratic.
“I think it’s not only legitimate what they did, but it’s illegitimate for New Hampshire to think they get to go first all the time,” he told The Epoch Times.
But Jim Splaine, the former state lawmaker behind the state statute formalizing New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status, said he believes that New Hampshire won’t bend.
He wrote that the DNC “misfired” and “failed” in its efforts to cancel the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
He said that depending on the results of the primary, President Biden’s “viability” could be in doubt.
