New Hampshire To America: Ignore The Headlines, We're Going First. Period.

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Read news coverage of the 2024 presidential primary calendar, and you’ll see words like “in limbo,” “unsettled,” and “in flux.”

But ask New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan about the notion that New Hampshire won’t hold the first primary, and he’s got a word of his own.

“No.”

In the months since the Democratic Party pushed through President Joe Biden’s primary calendar — dumping Iowa, bumping New Hampshire to a second-place tie with Nevada, and putting South Carolina at the front of the line — there has been a steady stream of political reporting based on the premise that New Hampshire’s place on the calendar is uncertain.

“Georgia, New Hampshire places in limbo,” the Associated Press wrote this week. “Iowa, New Hampshire Democratic presidential contests remain in flux,” added the left-leaning States News Service.

While it is true the date of New Hampshire’s primary remains unknown, Scanlan reiterated Monday there is no doubt that whatever that date is — up to and including Halloween 2023 if necessary — it will be held eight days before any similar contest as required by state law.

“I have been very clear, and nothing has changed,” Scanlan said. “New Hampshire will hold the first primary — period.”

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to give the Granite State until Sept. 1 to re-schedule its primary. But nobody in the New Hampshire Democratic Party supports such a move, even if it were possible to change the state’s law, which it isn’t.

“The DNC did not give New Hampshire the first-in-the-nation primary, and it is not theirs to take away,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley has said repeatedly since the DNC vote.

“We have a state law that says we’re going to go first, so we’re going to go first,” is Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s go-to line.

And so when Minyon Moore, co-chair of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, says, “There’s some space between us and the folks in the state [of New Hampshire] on this,” that “space” is an insurmountable obstacle.

Meanwhile, other states are shoring up New Hampshire’s place at the front of the line.

The South Carolina GOP just voted to move its primary. But not forward to February 3 as scheduled by the DNC, but back — to February 24. Assuming Nevada holds its contest in early February, that will give South Carolina weeks in the national political spotlight — a spotlight the state’s Democrats are all but certain to want to be a part of.

“This will give our voters the chance to do what they do best – interact one-on-one with our candidates,” said SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick.

Also on Friday, the DNC shot down a proposal by Iowa Democrats to hold a bifurcated caucus/“presidential preference card” mail-in event. It had proposed holding a caucus for local and state party business while allowing people to mail in their “presidential preference cards,” better known as a “mail-in ballot.”

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is giving the Iowa Democratic Party 30 days to make changes to the plan. It also likely violates the state’s new law mandating that caucuses must be held in person.

And even if Iowa Democrats can somehow get around a GOP-controlled state government and the DNC’s opposition to having it as one of the early states, the mail-in ballot concept creates another problem: New Hampshire may decide it’s a “similar contest” to the First in the Nation primary and state law would require the Granite State to go ahead of Iowa.

Asked about the Iowa Democrats’ scheme, Scanlan declined to say definitively whether it would be viewed as a primary-style contest.

“Things are still in flux in Iowa, and I’m not going to insert myself into their politics,” Scanlan said, though he acknowledged Iowa’s actions could trigger New Hampshire’s law.

And like many in New Hampshire politics, Scalan sees the DNC’s actions as an entirely self-inflicted political wound.

“From my perspective, Iowa Democrats in the past have had very successful traditional caucuses. My feeling is they should stand up to the DNC and say that’s what we’re going to continue to do. But that’s not my call to make.”

Unlike the call that will be made regarding the First in the Nation primary. And Scalan has already made it.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.