Biden Nixes NJ's Push For 1st Presidential Primary: Report

WASHINGTON, DC — President Joe Biden may have dealt a major hit to New Jersey's efforts to open his party's 2024 presidential election cycle. The president believes South Carolina should become the nation's first primary state, The Washington Post reports.

Over the past few years, more Democratic leaders have vocally pushed for altering the beginning of the primary election cycle. Iowa and New Hampshire lack the racial diversity that better represents the party's electorate, according to those who support changes to the lineup.

Several Democratic leaders in New Jersey made a recent push for the Garden State to hold the first election for the party's presidential nominee. But President Biden has different ideas, according to The Washington Post.

President Biden asked DNC leaders to make South Carolina the nation's first primary state, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada a week later and then subsequent weekly primaries in Georgia and Michigan, the Post reports.

“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 to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee. “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.”

New Jersey falls late in the lengthy cycle of presidential primaries. The Garden State's typically votes for party nominees in June, oftentimes months after most candidates have dropped out of the presidential race.

Gov. Phil Murphy and New Jersey Democratic State Chairman LeRoy Jones were among the state's party leaders pushing for New Jersey to open primary voting. In March, Jones contended that New Jersey has the diversity the national party seeks.

Murphy was in Washington, D.C., Thursday night, attending President Biden's state dinner with France President Emmanuel Macron. But it's unclear whether the governor and President Biden discussed the primary schedule.

The proposed 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.

Democratic officials will likely support President Biden's proposals, the Post reports. The Rules and Bylaws Committee will need to ratify the plan, before the full DNC votes on the changes in February, party officials told the Post.

The state also played a major part in propelling Biden to the party's presidential nomination in 2020. Biden began the election cycle placing fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and second in Nevada, while Bernie Sanders won the latter two states.

It's unclear how the Democratic field may take shape for 2024. President Biden, 80, gave himself a deadline of early next year to decide whether he'll run for re-election. No U.S. presidential incumbent has ever lost a primary challenge for their re-election.

South Carolina hasn't voted blue in a presidential election since 1976. Biden lost the state in 2020 to then-President Donald Trump by 12 points. But Democrats have maintained the state's importance in selecting the party's presidential nominee because of the racial diversity of South Carolina's Democratic voters.

The state, however, gave Biden 48.4 percent of the Democratic primary vote, followed by Sanders's 19.9 percent. Following the South Carolina primary, several Democratic candidates dropped out, including Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke. Their subsequent endorsements of Biden for president allowed the moderate wing of the party to unite around a singular candidate.