Dems Move To Give South Carolina, Not Iowa, 1st Presidential Vote

WASHINGTON, DC — In a dramatic shakeup of the presidential nominating calendar, officials with the Democratic National Committee stripped Iowa of the leadoff position it has held for five decades and replaced it with South Carolina, starting in 2024.

The shakeup, which came at the behest of President Joe Biden, would bump primaries in New Hampshire and Nevada to a week after South Carolina, and add Georgia and Michigan to the early nominating process. Changes to the calendar still have to be ratified by the full Democratic National Committee in a vote likely to come early next year. It is expected to be approved.

The Washington Post first reported that Biden asked the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to shake up its presidential nominating calendar to add more diversity — demographic, geographic and economic — to the early vetting process.

In his Thursday letter to Democratic leaders, Biden said the nominating process does not reflect the “diversity of America.”

“For decades, Black voters, in particular, have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” Biden wrote in a letter on personal stationery that did not carry the White House seal. “We rely on these voters in elections, but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”

A shakeup wasn’t unexpected as state party leaders jockey for the role of kingmaker — and the millions of dollars the role brings to their states in candidate spending, media attention and associated boosts in the hospitality industry — but the order Biden suggested hadn’t been among Democratic leaders’ discussions, The Post reported.

Biden said it’s imperative “voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the early window.”

“As I said in February 2020, you cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color — and that includes Black, Brown and Asian American & Pacific Islander voters,” wrote Biden, whose 2020 win in South Carolina was a breakout for his campaign.

The seismic shift in the nominating calendar did not sit well with small early states — predominantly white Iowa, which had embarrassing vote-tabulation problems in 2020, and New Hampshire, which traditionally has held the first presidential primary a week after Iowa’s caucuses.

Both states have laws protecting their prized first-in-the-nation status. They could simply ignore the new calendar, though they would forfeit delegates to the national convention if they did so.

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu has said his state will proceed as usual and hold the primary a week before any other state, putting Democratic candidates in the position of ignoring the state or facing sanctions from their party.

“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 Chairman Ray Buckley said in a statement. “This news is obviously disappointing, but we will be holding our primary first. We have survived past attempts over the decades, and we will survive this.”

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen issued a statement blasting “the White House’s short-sighted decision,” while fellow New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said, “I strongly oppose the President’s deeply misguided proposal.”

“But make no mistake," Hassan said in a statement. “New Hampshire’s law is clear, and our primary will continue to be first in the nation.”

Scott Brennan, one of Iowa’s representative to the Rules and Bylaws Committee, said “small, rural states” like his “must have a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

“Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in the heart of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party in newer generations," Brennan said.

Biden also proposed removing caucuses entirely from the early nominating calendar, calling them “restrictive and anti-worker.” They require voters to devote “significant amounts of time” in a nighttime gathering to choose candidates in person, “disadvantaging hourly workers and anyone who does not have the flexibility to go to a set location at a set time,” he said.

Dick Harpootlian, a longtime Biden ally, fundraiser and former South Carolina Democratic Party chair, said Thursday that he and Biden discussed South Carolina’s possible advancement the night of Biden’s 2020 primary victory there, The Associated Press reported.

Harpootlian said he’d impressed upon Biden that the state was a better place than Iowa to hold an even earlier presidential voting contest — to which Harpootlian said Biden was receptive.

“I think he agreed that this was a much more dynamic process,” Harpootlian said. “Iowa was just a nightmare.”

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s lone congressional Democrat and one of Biden’s top supporters in Congress, said the president called him Thursday to inform him of his push to move his state up.

“I didn’t ask to be first," Clyburn said. "It was his idea to be first.”

Clyburn's endorsement of Biden in 2020 boosted the candidate's flagging presidential campaign just ahead of South Carolina’s primary, which he won big. That helped Biden shake off early losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and eventually take the White House.

“He knows what South Carolina did for him, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again, by giving respect to South Carolina,” Clyburn said.

Biden also said the calendar should be reviewed every four years to ensure it still reflects the values and diversity of the party and the country.

Democrats will need Republican support in Georgia to move up the party’s primary. Republicans plan to stick with Iowa as the lead-off state in their nominating process, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

If the Iowa Democratic Party acquiesces to the national party, the two political parties would have different presidential primary calendars for the first time in years.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.