Moffett: DNC Primary Snub Will Be Great For New Hampshire

By Mike Moffett, NH Journal

The Democratic National Committee has officially scheduled the 2028 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary for Feb. 8—after South Carolina on Jan. 22 and Nevada on Feb. 1.

Conventional political wisdom holds that this is a snub to the Granite State, which has long held the nation’s first presidential primary.

There may be some truth to that.

But the DNC’s unfortunate scheduling decision may ultimately haunt the party—and prove a boon to New Hampshire. That may sound counterintuitive, so allow me to explain.

New Hampshire law, RSA 653:9, requires our presidential primary to be held at least seven days before any other state conducts a similar election. With South Carolina scheduled for Jan. 22, that points to a New Hampshire primary on Jan. 15 or earlier.

That is early, though not unprecedented. In 2008, our primary was held on Jan. 8.

The timing poses no problem for Republicans. For Democrats, however, it creates a collision between state law and national party rules.

The DNC has strengthened its penalties for states and candidates who participate in an unsanctioned early contest. A noncompliant state can lose its entire delegation and face a substantial fine. Candidates who violate the rules can be barred from DNC debates and prevented from earning delegates in other early-window contests. Campaigns must even denounce efforts conducted on their behalf in an unsanctioned primary.

New Hampshire, however, will still hold its election. The DNC may refuse to recognize the results, but it cannot stop Granite Staters from voting.

Such fun!

The origins of this feud can be traced to 2020, when Joe Biden finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary. Before voting was complete on Feb. 11, Biden had already left for South Carolina.

Rep. Jim Clyburn’s subsequent endorsement helped resurrect Biden’s campaign, and South Carolina delivered him a landslide primary victory there. Two years later, Biden urged the DNC to place South Carolina first on the 2024 calendar.

Whether one calls that political payback or party reform, the message to New Hampshire was unmistakable.

The DNC’s complaint is that New Hampshire is “too White.” Democrats frame the calendar change as an effort to give a more diverse electorate an earlier voice. But their fixation on demographic box-checking has now placed the national party at odds with the law and political culture of one of the country’s most politically engaged states.

An anonymously sourced line long attributed to Barack Obama warned, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to [expletive] things up.”

That would include New Hampshire’s traditional presidential primary.

In 2024, the DNC refused to recognize the results of New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 Democratic primary. Biden, running as a write-in candidate, received 63.8 percent of the vote. Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips received nearly 20 percent.

After a little-noticed party-run delegate-selection event in April, the DNC restored New Hampshire’s full convention delegation.

The national party may have preserved its preferred outcome, but it deprived Democratic voters elsewhere of an important service New Hampshire has traditionally provided: prolonged, close-up scrutiny of presidential candidates.

Had Biden actively campaigned here, his declining physical and mental capabilities might have been exposed earlier. Democrats might then have had time to coalesce around a viable alternative before the general election.

That brings us to 2028—and why New Hampshire will remain as important as ever, perhaps even more so.

Calling the January primary “unsanctioned” will not prevent it from taking place, nor will it prevent voters, reporters and pundits from paying attention. The DNC’s penalties may simply produce a new political phenomenon: the outsider primary.

The candidates themselves may be forced to stay away. Their campaigns may be required to disavow activity conducted on their behalf. But the DNC cannot silence New Hampshire voters, the national media, or genuinely independent political groups.

Imagine a Democratic field featuring Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The candidates might be absent from Manchester, Nashua and Concord, but their famous supporters—and independent organizations sympathetic to them—would have every reason to make their case here.

New Hampshire matters.

Recall the old Iowa Straw Poll, which attracted extraordinary attention as an early measure of who was politically hot—and who was not. Campaigns bought tickets and bused supporters to the event, yet political professionals still obsessed over the totals.

Unlike a party fundraiser or straw poll, the New Hampshire primary carries the imprimatur of an official election and a long history of serious retail politics. Its results will matter even if no convention delegates are attached to them.

Rudy Giuliani learned that lesson in 2008. He scaled back his effort in the early states and bet heavily on Florida. After a weak New Hampshire performance, his campaign lost momentum and collapsed before Florida could rescue it.

The celebrities, politicians and activists who swarm New Hampshire in 2027 on behalf of the major Democratic contenders will be sights to see. We can expect elaborate independent efforts, packed auditoriums and countless commercials.

The supposedly meaningless 2024 primary already demonstrated the possibilities. A nervous Democratic establishment deployed a statewide write-in operation to protect Biden. Former state party chair Kathy Sullivan helped lead that effort and later, when Democrats panicked over Biden’s debate performance, instructed them to “Suck it up, Buttercup.”

In 2027, there will be countless Kathy Sullivans working for the major contenders—or at least for organizations supporting them.

They will spend money. They will rent rooms. They will fill auditoriums. They will produce commercials and buy advertising.

And, frankly, I would rather see George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio than Gavin Newsom anyway.

Such fun!

The DNC may discover that stripping New Hampshire of its delegates does not make the primary irrelevant. It may instead free the contest from the party’s control while preserving all the attention, spending and political drama that have traditionally accompanied it.

The party will have been hoist with its own identity-politics petard.

Suck it up, South Carolina.

After 2028, look for the DNC to return the leadoff primary spot to New Hampshire—which may actually be a pity if our rogue primary turns out to be as much fun as it now promises to be.

State Rep. Mike Moffett (R-Loudon) is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who chairs the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

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.