Iowa Nice vs. New Hampshire Ornery: A Story of Rejected Democrats
When President Biden shook up his party’s presidential election calendar, Democrats in the two states removed from the front of the line responded in very different ways.
New Hampshire Democrats are going down kicking and screaming and insisting on holding a primary as if they didn’t just lose their opening spot.
Iowa Democrats, embarrassed by a 2020 fiasco that involved days of waiting for results that were nevertheless fraught with errors, have meekly accepted their fate as well as the first season.
In what may be a case study in Iowa versus New Hampshire’s stubbornness, one state is showing that it views its quadrennial parade of visiting presidential candidates as a political birthright, while the other appears to see more of that spectacle. as a lost benefit.
“The Democrats in Iowa made a mistake,” said David Scanlan, the secretary of state of New Hampshire, a position that has long been the ex-officio guardian of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary status. “They lost it for this year, and now the chain is broken.”
Mr. Scanlan’s staunch opposition to changing the New Hampshire primary date to suit party bosses in Washington has bipartisan appeal in the Granite State. Anyone involved in politics can quote there the 1975 state law requiring the state to host the country’s first presidential primaries, codifying a centuries-old tradition.
New Hampshire and the Democratic National Committee are still feuding over the state’s refusal to move back its primaries. On Friday, the national party wrote to New Hampshire Democrats that the state’s “pointless” primary could “disenfranchise and confuse voters.” New Hampshire’s attorney general responded Monday with a cease-and-desist letter, saying the DNC’s “senseless” categorization violated the state’s voter suppression laws.
Iowa has a much shorter history as the first, starting in the 1970s: the first president to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Mr. Biden has little political loyalty to either state. In 2020, he finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primaries. It was a victory in South Carolina, which he has now moved to the forefront of the Democratic calendar, that propelled him to the party’s nomination and ultimately to the White House.
This year, New Hampshire will hold an early primary anyway, with 21 Democrats in the Jan. 23 presidential primary — but not Mr. Biden, who skipped the state. Iowa Democrats who follow the rules, on the other hand, will hold a primary by mail and have until March to return their ballots.
“As soon as Biden got nominated, the writing was on the wall,” said Pete D’Alessandro, a senior aide in Iowa for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns. “The grieving process has taken a little longer, so we’re probably at a later stage than New Hampshire.”
Iowa Democrats have long suspected that their time as a presidential proving ground was over. Even before the 2020 caucus night collapse, there were grumblings from inside and outside Iowa about how an almost all-white state had such an influence on how a racially diverse party chose its presidential candidates.
While some old-timers cling to the hope that Iowa can regain the top spot in the 2028 cycle, there is a growing belief among younger Democrats that the caucuses are a distraction from local organizing work, and that the party’s 2020 presidential candidates are pursuing a left-wing vision of the Democrats who helped reverse Republican victories in the state that year and again in 2022.
“Iowa Democrats are really disappointed,” said Tom Miller, a former Iowa attorney general who was one of the first elected officials in the state to endorse Barack Obama in 2008 and then backed Montana Gov. Steve Bullock in the 2020 caucuses. “The future is certainly not good.”
The opposition in New Hampshire has paid off with a series of visits by ambitious Democrats. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh ShapiroRepresentative Ro Khanna of California, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York and others have headed to New Hampshire in recent months to address voters — in case it might come in handy later.
The path to Iowa is less traveled, with Governor Tim Walz of neighboring Minnesota making a number of trips, including for last summer’s Iowa State Fair.
New Hampshire Democrats argue it is clear to future presidential candidates that the road to the White House still passes through the state’s town halls and diners. Mr. Scanlan said Monday that he was unimpressed with South Carolina’s anointed spot at the front of the Democratic primary.
“I did a Google search to see what kind of activity is happening in South Carolina, and there’s not really a lot of news there,” he said on Monday in an interview that took place just as Mr. Biden was giving a speech. campaign speech in South Carolina. “The only real action is happening in New Hampshire.”
Democrats in both Iowa and New Hampshire harbor dreams — which will most likely go unanswered with Mr. Biden in the White House — that when the rules for the next presidential primary process are set, they will regain their place.
Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, predicted that the state’s fight for its place on the 2028 calendar would be much more intense than in 2024, with Mr. Biden’s renomination by most of the party would be considered an academic exercise. .
New Hampshire’s plan to win over DNC members in the next cycle, Mr. Buckley said, would involve rallying the party’s progressive members, who remember when Senator Sanders won the state’s primaries twice — including although he did not win the nomination both times. .
“It’s no secret that the establishment was very angry with New Hampshire because Bernie Sanders won in 2016 and 2020,” Buckley said. “I think you’ll see a response from the progressive community across the country.”
Iowa’s comeback plan is, as you might expect, a little more polite.
Iowa Democratic Chairwoman Rita Hart said she believed there would be “a level playing field” when it came to bidding for the 2028 early primaries. She said she did not expect Biden to put his thumb on the scale for South Africa would lay. Carolina at the expense of Iowa.
“We’ve had some very difficult conversations with the DNC,” she said. “We wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t been given the reassurance that we will have every chance to return to the first tier in 2028.”
Scott Brennan, a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party who was involved in the party’s losing bid to retain his early slot in 2024, said that unlike New Hampshire Democrats, if Iowa Democrats win their first would not get her place back in the country, she would accept that decision.
“I think we’ve earned the right to be there,” Mr. Brennan said. “If only because the process has given us Barack Obama as president twice.”