MANCHESTER, N.H.—New Hampshire has long punched above its weight. The 10th smallest state – the 2020 Census counted its population as less than Hawaii’s – it continues to have an outsized effect on American politics. Every four years the state hosts the nation’s first presidential primary. New Hampshire’s pride of place isn’t just an informal tradition: State law demands it.
New Hampshirites recognize that the tradition gives them power. It is one that Joe Biden has set out to eliminate. The reason he cites is that New Hampshire’s electorate is insufficiently diverse. Black voters are “the backbone of the Democratic Party,” Biden stated in a December letter to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee on the Presidential Nominating Process. The president instructed Democrats “to stop taking these voters for granted,” and “give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”
Perhaps just as significant, if not more so, New Hampshire Democrats have shown themselves to be less than enthusiastic about candidate Biden over the years. The last time Biden submitted himself to the voters of New Hampshire in a primary, in 2020, he finished a distant fifth and fled the state on Election Day before the votes were even counted. South Carolina Democrats, most specifically African American voters, resurrected the Biden campaign, and he has directed the Democratic National Committee to make its primary the first in the nation this year. “Biden is rewarding his supporters,” Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, told RealClearPolitics. It is not only a reward for the voters of South Carolina. It is a rebuff of New Hampshire and its cherished primary primacy.
Biden may have little interest in letting New Hampshire continue to go first, but there is broad support among New Hampshire voters for the state’s first-in-the-nation law. A poll published last month by the University of New Hampshire’s Granite State Poll found that 60% of New Hampshire residents either strongly or somewhat favor their state going first. Only 2% “strongly oppose” the state law requiring New Hampshire to hold the first primary.
If South Carolina is scheduled as the first primary by the DNC, New Hampshire will be bound by state law to move its primary to a week before the South Carolina contest. If the DNC moves South Carolina up again, New Hampshire will be obliged to move its primary up yet again. Although DNC could punish the Granite State by refusing to seat its delegates at next summer’s convention, New Hampshire has some hardball tactics of its own.
Biden seems to have expected New Hampshire to go along with his demands. But Scala told RealClearPolitics, “I’m confident that the New Hampshire secretary of state will follow state law.” Which means that if Biden is unwilling to recognize as legitimate New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation position, his name would not appear on the state’s Democratic primary ballot. Asked by RealClearPolitics whether Biden’s name will be on the primary ballot, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office said, “That is up to President Biden.”
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told RealClearPolitics, “New Hampshire’s primary is 100% state run and set by state law.”
Buckley said that though he would “welcome any dialogue with the DNC,” the state Democratic party will be focusing on winning New Hampshire offices. They expect that to be more of a challenge than usual – because of the president’s stance. “We have no doubt that President Biden would win the Democratic primary here,” Buckley said. But the national Democratic party, by weakening the state party, isn’t exactly making itself popular with New Hampshire Democrats.
“The DNC has handed New Hampshire Republicans a salient political attack to use with swing voters against both state and national Democrats,” Buckley added. New Hampshire Democrats will be vulnerable “when the governorship, control of both houses of the state legislature, two battleground congressional seats, and the presidency will be at stake.”
Could a squabble over scheduling a primary have any impact on the national general election? It is not inconceivable that New Hampshire could determine the outcome of the general election. Recall the 2000 presidential vote, with its infamous “hanging chad” ballots in Florida. The race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore was so close that even with Bush winning Florida, had Gore carried New Hampshire, he would have won in the Electoral College total. (Some of the votes Gore needed were captured by liberal Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. If even just one-third of Nader’s 22,199 New Hampshire votes had gone to the Democrat instead, Gore would have won New Hampshire’s four electoral votes, giving him the 270 electoral votes needed to swing the election).
This time around Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could run well in the New Hampshire primary, even against an incumbent president of his own party. If the 2024 presidential election is determined by the Republican candidate winning New Hampshire – an outcome neither likely nor inconceivable in our era of razor-thin political margins – Democrats would surely regret Biden’s disdain for the state’s first-in-the-nation primary policy.
RFK Jr. certainly thinks so. While Biden has been busy alienating New Hampshire voters, Kennedy’s campaign has been courting them. Kennedy showed up here earlier this month to open a new state headquarters.
“Regardless of whether or not President Biden is on the primary ballot, he will win the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primary,” Buckley said with confidence. “Recent polling indicated New Hampshire Democratic voters overwhelmingly plan to write in Biden if his name is not on the primary ballot."
Maybe.
At the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire, at least one likely voter plans to express his choice by casting a write-in candidate. Bill Dutton told RealClearPolitics he plans to cast his presidential primary ballot for Scooby-Doo.
