Veteran political reporter Mark Halperin scored quite a few scoops during the 2024 campaign season, including President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race for the White House. On Thursday he made a disturbing prediction regarding the future of the New Hampshire Democrats’ First in the Nation presidential primary:
It’s DOA.
On his popular “Morning Meeting” show on the 2Way streaming platform Thursday, Halperin and his two co-hosts, Democrat Dan Turrentine and Republican Sean Spicer, discussed the battle for Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair. The issue of the 2028 calendar came up, and Halperin had some very kind — and very brutal — commentary for Granite State Democrats.
Halperin noted that Democrats dumped both Iowa and New Hampshire from the calendar last year, and he predicted they will do the same four years from now.
“There are problems with Iowa and New Hampshire; they’re not diverse,” Halperin said, though he still urged Democrats to keep the two states at the top of the schedule. “The people in those two states take it (the primary) so much more seriously than anyone else.”
He then asked Spicer, who served as Trump’s White House spokesperson during his first term and is still close to the president-elect, if Trump would keep the current Iowa-New Hampshire calendar. Spicer said yes.
“New Hampshire has a soft spot in his heart,” Spicer said of his old boss. “And in Iowa, he’s fine.” Changing the order of the primaries would require expending political capital, and Trump doesn’t care enough to make the effort now that he’s serving his second and final term, Spicer added.
Which means the Democratic and GOP primary calendars will be out of sync in 2028 just as they were this year. To get them back in sync, Halperin said, “The Democrats are going to have to go back.” And that’s not going to happen.
“I think the party cares too much about diversity to go back,” he added.
Turrentine, a Democratic Party insider, didn’t disagree. And he noted another challenge New Hampshire Democrats would have to overcome to keep the FITN primary: the Electoral College map.
“We (Democrats) have now lost Nevada and Arizona. We moved backward at the presidential level. And so I think the idea is that our candidates would camp out in Nevada, a very diverse state. Camp out in Michigan, camp out in South Carolina versus Iowa, which seems to have drifted further away (from our party).”
“Yes, New Hampshire, we still won it, I know,” Turrentine conceded. “It’s purplish. But when Democrats think about the future after the 2030 Census, simply winning the ‘Blue Wall’ states back will not be sufficient. We need to lock in — or make super competitive — the Georgias, the Carolinas, the Nevadas, the Arizonas and the Floridas of the world again.
“And I think the best thing we could do to ensure that is to move (those states) up in the calendar and get our candidates really focusing on those states and what appeals to their voters.”
Despite having an all-Democrat federal delegation with two senior members of Congress — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Annie Kuster — Biden and the DNC suffered very little blowback when they stripped Granite State Democrats of their place on the calendar. In fact, state party leaders including Kuster and Shaheen rallied around Biden (who refused to set foot in the state until after the primary was over or allow his name on the ballot) and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a write-in campaign to give Biden a win in the primary.
Asked about predictions the DNC would never return the primary to New Hampshire, state Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley and the members of the delegation declined to comment.
When the DNC picks a new chair, that person will play a major role in setting the calendar. The four leading contenders are Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and New York State Sen. James Skoufis.
Ironically, given the Democrats’ complaints about New Hampshire’s lack of diversity, all four are White males. None of the four has publicly stated a position on whether New Hampshire should be returned to its FITN status.
Meanwhile, the chair of the Nevada Democratic Party sent her fellow party chairs a letter this week making the case for letting the Silver State go ahead of the Granite State.
“If Democrats want to win back working-class voters and rebuild our broad coalition of voters of color, we should elevate the most working class and most diverse battleground state in the nation to be the first presidential preference primary for the 2028 cycle,” Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno wrote.
“Nevada is the battleground state that best reflects our growing nation and the Democratic Party cannot afford to let overwhelmingly college-educated, White, or less competitive states start the process of winnowing the field again in 2028.”
Sens. Maggie Hassan and Shaheen, who were unable to protect the FITN primary two years ago, have yet to say anything about the upcoming fight over the 2028 calendar.
Incoming GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte, on the other hand, told NHJournal she’s already focused on the First in the Nation fight and urged the delegation to do the same.
“I believe New Hampshire plays a pivotal role in the primary process as the first in the nation, and in my view it is critical we defend our primary,” Ayotte said Thursday. She added that the support for reelected David Scanlan as secretary of state is good news in the FITN fight.
“He’s done a very good job and his overwhelming reelection is a testament to that,” Ayotte said. “David Scanlan and Bill Gardner before him have done everything they possibly can to protect our primary.”
Asked about the performance of Granite State Democrats, Ayotte said, “Well, I hope they will speak to their party’s national leaders. Defending the primary has always been a bipartisan effort. New Hampshire should be the first in the nation. We’ve earned that right with the work that we’ve done.”
But one Granite State Democratic insider told NHJournal on background they agree with Halperin. “It’s over. Obama, Biden, and Kamala (Harris) all lost here,” a reference to their performances in competitive primaries.
“Why would the DNC want to come back? And I’m not sure how many Democrats (voters) really care.”
