New Hampshire’s Republican and Democrat leaders are making it crystal clear that the state that’s held the first-in-the-nation presidential primary for the past century will not give into demands from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to give up their early voting position in the Democrats’ presidential nominating calendar.
Longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party leader Ray Buckley on Thursday argued in a letter to the DNC that the move by the national party to revamp the top of their 2024 presidential nominating calendar by moving South Carolina to the leadoff spot — just ahead of New Hampshire and Nevada — would be "an unfortunate, reckless, and self-inflicted blow" that would damage Democrats' prospects in the key northeastern general election battleground state.
"The DNC has handed New Hampshire Republicans a salient political attack to use against both state and national Democrats," Buckley wrote.
DEMOCRATS PUSH TO UPEND THEIR PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATING CALENDAR
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu was even more blunt, writing in a letter that "we will not be blackmailed. We will not be threatened, and we will not give up."
THIS GOP GOVERNOR SAYS DNC PLAN TO UPEND PRIMARY CALENDAR ‘DEAD ON ARRIVAL’
The letters came on the day that the DNC had set as the deadline for the five early voting states in its proposed calendar to show that they are moving toward meeting the national party’s necessary requirements — or else they would forfeit their early slots in the new schedule. For New Hampshire, that means scrapping a state law that protects its cherished first-in-the-nation primary status and passing legislation to expand access to early voting.
The DNC’S proposal, which cleared a key first hurdle when it was overwhelmingly approved last month by the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, moves South Carolina to the leadoff position in the Democrats' primary calendar, on Feb. 3, 2024, with New Hampshire and Nevada holding primaries three days later, followed by Georgia and Michigan.
It’s a move aimed at making the leadoff state in the nominating cycle more representative of a party that’s become increasingly diverse in recent decades.
President Joe Biden’s plan, which the full DNC membership is expected to pass at their winter meeting in early February, is a dramatic shift from the current calendar, which has seen Iowa and New Hampshire for half a century hold the first two leadoff contests in both the Democratic and Republican Party schedules.
For years, plenty of Democrats have knocked Iowa and New Hampshire as being unrepresentative of the party as a whole for being largely White with few major urban areas. Nevada and South Carolina — which currently vote third and fourth in the calendar — are much more diverse than either Iowa or New Hampshire.
