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This legislation has been added to the updated 2024 presidential primary calendar.
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Recent posts:
Monday, January 23, 2023
Hawaii Senate Bill Proposes Super Tuesday Presidential Primary
Sunday, January 22, 2023
On "The People of New Hampshire vs. Joe Biden"
Politico's Ryan Lizza recently sat down with Ray Buckley, the longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, for a conversation about the fallout in the Granite state since the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (DNCRBC) adopted President Biden's presidential primary calendar proposal back in December.
This is a really fascinating conversation with a few items that were new to me in the context of this brewing back and forth between New Hampshire Democrats and the national party. But it was a conversation that, given who was on the other end of the line, was focused on one side of that back and forth. That is both understandable and fine.
What was perhaps less so was the number of times Lizza dipped into the well to use phrases like "Biden screwed you" or "Democrats betrayed New Hampshire." There was nothing in this conversation that backed those notions up, even with a New Hampshire-centric focus. And I get it. This is an important story. Well, FHQ thinks so anyway. But primary calendar stories are inevitably not clickbait. Trust me, they are not. So Lizza tried a bit too hard to play to his audience -- Buckley -- and/or to spice up a story that, again, while important, lacks a natural spice.
Again, I get it.
And fortunately, Buckley, for his part, never took that "betrayal/screwed" bait. In fact, the story Buckley told about the period leading up to the DNCRBC decision on the calendar proposal underlined that. He described to Lizza how the New Hampshire congressional delegation had met with Biden on the Monday before the president's letter to the DNCRBC members -- the one first revealing the calendar proposal -- on Wednesday. Buckley said that Biden on that Monday thanked the four members of the all-Democratic New Hampshire delegation for their points (on the Granite state primary and the 2024 calendar) and gave no indication of what was coming. He did not, in other words, thank them for their points defending the first-in-the-nation primary and make any promises that that would continue.
Now, FHQ will argue, as it had elsewhere in this space, that what set expectations high for New Hampshire dodging the bullet again in 2024 was that the conventional wisdom that had developed before December 1 was that the Iowa caucuses would be nixed and all the other pre-window states -- New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in that order -- would move up and room would be made in late February for a midwestern alternative (Michigan) before Super Tuesday in early March. That was the reporting. Basically, that New Hampshire would shift into the very first position, not just the first primary position. But that was the reporting without one major component: the president had not weighed in. Biden ultimately did provide input on the eve of the DNCRBC meeting on December 2. One will excuse New Hampshirites for suffering from whiplash after going from thinking the primary was safe one day and knowing they were in for a battle with the president/DNC the next.
But seemingly no assurances were made that New Hampshire would retain its position in the primary calendar order. It is just that the president held his input on the calendar until the very end. But betrayal? Screwed? The record really does not reflect that.
However, that is small(er) potatoes in the full context of what is actually going on between the White House/DNC and New Hampshire Democrats on the issue of the Granite state's 2024 presidential primary. The biggest shortcoming throughout the whole conversation was the omission of the rules as they will exist with respect to punishments in the 2024 cycle. Lizza and Buckley continually cited part of the rules with respect to rogue state contests. That, in New Hampshire's case, if Democrats in the Granite state conduct a primary before the February 6 slot set aside for them in the newly adopted calendar proposal, then the party would lose delegates to the national convention.1 That ground has been covered both in this conversation and elsewhere.
But neither Lizza nor Buckley made mention of the penalties for candidates who campaign in states with rogue contests. The same DNC rules that have been enhanced for the 2024 cycle. That those candidate penalties were ignored was particularly glaring in light of the emphasis Buckley placed on advanced planning by past Democratic incumbent presidents. The chair made a point in his conversation with Lizza to link how both Bill Clinton (in 1995) and Barack Obama (in 2011) set up shop in New Hampshire in August before the primary and the subsequent success New Hampshire Democrats had in general elections in those cycles. It is a valid point.
Yet, under the newly adopted rules -- rules that have been finalized for 2024 other than the calendar portion of them -- candidates cannot campaign in a state with a rogue contest. Otherwise, such a candidate would forfeit any delegates won in that primary or caucus. Under those rules, candidate Biden cannot campaign in New Hampshire in or ahead of 2024 if the presidential primary in the Granite state is not on February 6. The broadened definition of campaigning in the 2024 DNC rules includes setting up shop in New Hampshire in the way Buckley described. That also answers 1) why Biden cannot file to appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot -- that is "campaigning" too under the definition -- and 2) why Biden could not appear/campaign in the state until after the primary (whenever it may be).
Those are important facts about the contours of the current divide between New Hampshire Democrats and the White House/national party that never came up in the conversation. And again, it is a glaring omission. More so, when one considers the hypothesis that dawned on Lizza midway through one of his questions late in the conversation: that it would be better for New Hampshire if Biden ultimately did not seek reelection. In other words, there would be an open and competitive Democratic nomination race in 2024 that would early and often bring candidates back into the Granite state.
Not necessarily.
Now, there are not a lot of delegates at stake in New Hampshire, a reality Lizza raised at least once. Are candidates going to care that they may lose out on a handful of delegates that would only have gotten them a tiny fraction of the way toward the total needed to continue to be competitive for, much less clinch, the nomination? Would the potential win -- even a win in a "state-sponsored public opinion poll," even in a state where the results on the Democratic side are already heavily discounted because of demography in the state in the best of times -- outweigh those delegate penalties on candidates?
In the case where Biden is running for renomination and is an advocate of a change at the top of the calendar? Yes. Yes, candidate Biden would care. If this DNCRBC-adopted calendar proposal is successfully adopted by the full DNC in early February, then the president will not be in the Granite state to organize for November 2024 until sometime after the likely January 2024 New Hampshire primary. Those will be the rules. The president will follow them. ...whether some "mechanic from Arkansas or Oklahoma" runs and wins in New Hampshire or not.
However, perhaps things look different if Biden does not seek reelection in 2024 and a bunch a prospective candidates mull whether to campaign (in violation of the rules) in a rogue New Hampshire. Maybe. But that way peril lies for prospective candidates. Take the case of Michigan in 2008 under a set of DNC rules where national party had the option to strip candidates of any delegates won in a rogue contest. Some candidates like Hillary Clinton decided to stay on the ballot of the Michigan primary. Others, like Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, opted to remove their names from the ballot. The Florida and Michigan situation was already messy in 2008 without that wrinkle. Having to determine an equitable way to allocate delegates after the fact in a rogue contest where some candidates were on the ballot and others were not was not easy, and New Hampshire Democrats would be signing up for that role in a cycle where DNC rules now require the stripping of those delegates from candidates. Memories of Florida and Michigan in 2007-08 alone may be enough to deter some candidates in an open Democratic presidential nomination race in New Hampshire in 2023-24. And that is without considering that the New Hampshire results are already discounted in the press and by the Democratic primary electorate because of its lack of diversity.
Folks, this is not a slam dunk for New Hampshire. Things may be better for Democrats in the state if Biden opts not to run, but they will not necessarily be markedly better. Candidates running against the national party may be more inclined to take a chance. But what does that get them? A feather in the cap that may work with anti-establishment voters in subsequent states. Who fits that profile when voting starts in 2024 may be a majority of the Democratic primary electorate, but it is not now.
Look, this calendar shake up remains a gamble for Biden and the DNC for the reasons Buckley cited. But New Hampshire Democrats are gambling too, gambling that the old rules of thumb will once again apply in 2024. And it just is not clear that that is the case in a cycle when New Hampshire, for the first time since 1980, is likely not directly protected by DNC rules.
Again, this is a great conversation between Lizza and Buckley. If you are interested in the 2024 calendar machinations like FHQ is, then you should listen to it. But take it with a grain of salt. Take it with a grain of salt because it is 1) understandably New Hampshire-centric and 2) it does not fully account for the rules as they will exist for the 2024 cycle.
And those rules should be given some attention.
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1 And yes, the delegate reduction is something that would happen outside of the control of New Hampshire Democrats. The state party is in control of neither the governor's mansion nor the General Court -- the legislature -- in Concord. Of course, neither Lizza nor Buckley spent any time discussing alternate routes New Hampshire Democrats could take to comply with the proposed DNC rules outside of utilizing the presidential primary option. But again, that is understandable given the framing of the story/conversation.
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Saturday, January 21, 2023
Alternative Bill Would Schedule New York Presidential Primary for April
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This legislation has been added to the updated 2024 presidential primary calendar.
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Friday, January 20, 2023
New Hampshire Senate Moves to Further Protect First-in-the-Nation Presidential Primary with Constitutional Amendment
Hawaii Bill Would Establish a Presidential Primary
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This legislation has been added to the updated 2024 presidential primary calendar.
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Thursday, January 19, 2023
State House Companion Bill Would Also Push Michigan Presidential Primary to February 27
Read the rest at FHQ Plus.
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This legislation has been added to the updated 2024 presidential primary calendar.
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Recent posts:
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
How Do New Hampshirites Really Feel About 2024 and the Presidential Primary Calendar?
FHQ will admit it. We almost took the bait.
...again.
Another group of New Hampshire Democrats are voicing their displeasure with President Biden's proposed shake up to the 2024 presidential primary calendar. And once again, it looks like a doubling -- or tripling -- down on the same arguments that Democrats in the Granite state have used in defense of their first-in-the-nation presidential primary since the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (DNCRBC) adopted the proposed calendar in December. And these Democrats are equally as justified in making that defense directly to the president as others have been over the last month or more. The calendar decision has not been finalized and will not be until the February DNC winter meeting at the earliest.
But the national media keeps treating this as a national story. And it is! In that national story, New Hampshire Democrats keep digging in, seemingly making the situation worse with national Democrats. In that game it would behoove New Hampshire Democrats to quietly defer to the state law that requires the secretary of state in the Granite state to schedule the presidential primary there at least seven days before any other similar contest. That decision, after all, is out of their hands. So, too, are the changes to state law that the DNCRBC has requested New Hampshire Democrats push for with Republicans in control of the levers of power in the state.
What continues to be in the control of New Hampshire Democrats is how they push for those changes. Elected Democrats in the New Hampshire General Court can propose legislation to change the date of the primary and to add no-excuse absentee voting. One Democrat has already proposed an expansion of absentee voting conditions (even if those changes likely fall short of what national Democrats have in mind).
Granted, the incentives are just not there to push for changes to the presidential primary date or to propose some alternative method of selecting and allocating national convention delegates. Those are both well within the power of New Hampshire Democrats to do, but to cede any ground -- any -- on first-in-the-nation status is to undermine the whole institution. And Democrats in the Granite state are not going to do that, especially before the decision has been finalized at the national level.
So we are all left with this constant back and forth of bad optics for New Hampshire Democrats in the national media. A decision still has not been made and the vacuum keeps getting filled by the constant, yet natural, drip of New Hampshire Democrats lobbying the president or the DNCRBC in the lead up to when the calendar decision is to be made.
But rather than continue on that feedback loop where a new communication from Concord to Washington begets yet another national story about New Hampshire Democrats digging their hole even deeper with national Democrats, the focus should perhaps be elsewhere.
Why is it that New Hampshire Democrats are doing this? Yes, yes. Defense of the presidential primary. Everyone gets that. But why are they doing this in this way when continued defiance only hurts them with the national party -- when it only seemingly brings the state party inescapably closer to sanctions from the national party?
Much of this has to do with the fact that New Hampshire Democrats have two audiences to which they have to play. Every facet of the above story is about how the decisions state Democrats are making are playing with the national party audience (whether the national party as an organization or Democrats nationally). But how do these decisions play at home? In New Hampshire?
No, FHQ is not talking about the DNC proposal. The vocalized response thus far seems to be against the changes called for the in the calendar plan adopted by the DNCRBC (but not yet finalized by the DNC). But how do New Hampshirites feel about the defense the Democratic Party in the Granite state is waging?
Do they feel it is adequate?
Do they feel it is even necessary?
This strikes FHQ as a missing link in all the reporting on the New Hampshire Democratic Party response to the DNCRBC decision. The public reaction to the DNCRBC decision has been covered but feelings about the NHDP response have not. And that is important. It is important because NHDP continues to raise the negative ramifications of the national-level process and decision on electoral prospects for Democrats up and down the ballot in the Granite state.
If New Hampshire Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in the electorate are of the opinion that the NHDP response to the national party is adequate, then it may not hurt Democrats in races other than the presidential race in 2024 or only affect them at the margins. [Yes, those margins can matter.]
If those same folks in New Hampshire feel like the response from NHDP is unnecessary -- that New Hampshire is going to do what New Hampshire is going to do and go first anyway -- then it may not hurt Democrats at all in 2024. Republicans in the state are just screaming into the wind to no avail when raising the issue as a potential wedge.
But we do not know those things. They are not part of the national narrative on this story. [And the New Hampshire press has incentives to tell this story as a defense of the primary and that alone.] So this story keeps getting told the same way every time it is revealed that some New Hampshire Democrat or group of them is making another pitch to some national Democrat or the DNCRBC.
And it is not that FHQ is demanding a poll be commissioned. We do not even really have this information anecdotally. We are just being made to take a variety of New Hampshire Democrats' words for it that this calendar move -- whether New Hampshire Democrats defy it or not -- will be injurious to Democrats in 2024.
Will it? There are ways to answer that and no one is really getting at them. ...at least not yet.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2023
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Post-2022 Partisan Control of State Government and 2024 Presidential Primary Movement
What if anything do the 2022 midterm results mean for primary movement on the 2024 presidential primary calendar?
Part of that question was actually answered back in August when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (DNCRBC) finalized all of the delegate selection rules for the 2024 cycle except one section. That exception? The pre-window calendar rules and exemptions. And why did the panel wait? They pushed pause on finalizing the early calendar because the midterms were going to be determinative in just how ambitious Democrats could be in reworking the calendar. A Republican surge would have meant something more like the status quo would have prevailed while a Democratic hold or gains would have given the DNCRBC a bit more latitude in changing things.
The results ended up closer to the latter and Democrats swung big in booting Iowa and (effectively) New Hampshire from the pre-window in the adopted calendar proposal for 2024.
That has largely been the story thus far for 2024 primary movement, prospective or otherwise. And that is unusual. It is atypical for a party currently occupying the White House to tinker with its delegate selection rules, especially when the incumbent president is signaling a run for reelection. Very simply, incumbent presidents of the post-reform era have made a habit of demonstrating that they like the rules that got them to the nomination in the first place and have tended to carry them over for the most part to their reelection cycle.
That has not been the case with the Biden administration of the DNCRBC following the 2022 midterms. Instead of the focus being on Republican-controlled states angling to better position their primaries and caucuses for a competitive nomination cycle, the spotlight has been on two states tabbed to be a part of the new Democratic pre-window lineup. Two states where Democrats did not gain sufficient state legislative or gubernatorial seats to change the tide. That is, the talk has been about Georgia and New Hampshire not moving because Republicans in both state governments stand in the way.
But the DNC calendar rules are not finalized yet and will not be until the February winter meeting at the earliest. Georgia and New Hampshire will continue to be stories in the process, but may force Democrats to look elsewhere to states that may be better able to implement changes. Given the national party's preference for state-run contests, any changes to move additional states' contests around will occur in state legislatures across the country.
The other side of this, of course, is that Republicans did not flip control of any state legislative chambers in 2022. And the only gubernatorial seat the GOP gained was in Nevada, where Democrats retained control of the legislature (and the primary is already early on the calendar). As a component of possible primary movement, the lack of a typical out-party surge in the midterms did not portend pronounced primary movement.
Another significant component is that Republicans are still dealing with the fallout of the primary movement from the 2012 cycle. As a quick primer on 2012, one has to go back to the 2004 cycle when Democrats aligned their calendar rules with those of the Republicans. Both parties allowed February contests for the first time then. While that set off some movement toward the new early, most states did not catch on to the rules change and act until the 2008 cycle. But that rush to the front of the queue was marked not just by states trying to shift to the earliest date allowed by the two major parties -- the first Tuesday in February -- but by a handful risking penalties to go beyond that point, threatening the positions of the earliest states exempted from national party rules. That pushed Iowa and New Hampshire to the brink of conducting contests in 2007, something that decision makers in neither national party seemed to prefer.
And that influenced the calendar rules for 2012. The parties informally brokered a later start to primary season, nixing February as the earliest point during which non-exempt states could hold contests. Both parties nudged that starting time back to the first Tuesday in March for the 2012 cycle. But that left nearly 20 states in the lurch. All had February or early contests on the books. And all 20 needed to change state laws in order to come back into compliance with the new national party rules.
That change set off a flurry of activity on the state level in 2011. But there was a pattern to it. With an active Republican presidential nomination race on the horizon, the Republican-controlled states among that 20 tended to move back but less so. They mostly ended up in March. Democratic-controlled states, on the other hand, pushed even further back on the calendar with less at stake.
And that is the legacy of 2012. The March start point for most states is still there in the national party rules and so are most of the Republican states. Some of the Democratic ones have even come back. That is not to say that there are not Republican-controlled states later in the calendar. There are. But there just is not a lot of movement that can happen at this point. Not movement forward anyway.
In the end, there will be primary movement for 2024. Some has already happened prior to 2023. But the point here is to hone in on just how much movement can happen. Some can, but this is neither 2008 nor 2012. The changes on the Democratic side will likely push at least Iowa and New Hampshire into January and bring Michigan at a minimum into the pre-window. Other than that, however, there may be some incremental changes to comply with the new national Republican rules that will affect the end of the calendar. Unified Republican control in Montana and South Dakota ought to make those changes easier.
The 2022 midterm elections saw relative stability across the board, and the lack of change there will affect how much the calendar is able to change in 2023. So far the outlook suggests limited tweaks. But it is still early.
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