There is a state law that says New Hampshire has to be the first primary in the presidential election process. This means that no matter when another state sets its primary date, New Hampshire has to set one earlier. You can say what you like, but NH has made it a statutory requirement that we hold the first primary.
New Hampshire Democrats, despite having numerous opportunities to offer a minority candidate for high public office, continue to find and push some of the palest, whitest, proglodytes on their ideological plantation. This, combined with the Granite State’s majority-white population (and Joe Biden’s never doing well here except as a write-in in 2024 before he dropped out), convinced the (D)EI party to pick someplace else they view as a bit browner.
That was 2024. What’s up with 2028? New Hampshire is still too white.
Given that the (D)EI is the primary driver of policy at the DNC, and how New Hampshire Dems are so racist that they don’t think they can get a person of color nominated to run for Congress, any official recognition of their part of the First In The Nation Primary seems unlikely.
Technically, it hardly matters what the DNC thinks about the actual voting. The State primary will be when it is, and Democrats will have to show up because it’s the only day they’ve got. The issue is whether the DNC will ding dem delegates from the state or punish Dem candidates from campaigning here or registering as candidates to be on the ballot. The DNC, like the RNC, is a private entity that can set its own rules and so on. It is under no obligation to include, count, or accept results with or without punishment.
The DNC expects states interested in being at the front of the primary calendar to apply/make their case by January 16, 2026.
It will be months — and potentially years — before the 2028 calendar is set. In June, several members of new DNC Chairman Ken Martin’s leadership team said the party was considering scrambling its voting order for the next election cycle. That also happened in 2024, when — at President Joe Biden’s behest — South Carolina hosted the Democrats’ first-in-the-nation contest, giving the incumbent president a resounding win in the state that had helped resurrect his flagging campaign four years earlier.
That move was also a nod to the party’s loyal base of Black voters, while adding Georgia and Michigan to the so-called early window.
State Democrat party Chairman for life, King Ray Buckey, is reported to have reminded the attendees at the party Summer meeting in Minnesota, that,
…New Hampshire is bound by state law to host the nation’s opening presidential primary election regardless of the DNC’s wishes.
New Hampshire, of course, bucked the DNC’s 2024 calendar. And Iowa has threatened to go rogue as well in 2028 if its skipped over again.
They didn’t buck jack shit. Logistically, ignoring the DNC was the only option left to them, so they ran a write-in campaign for Joe Biden. It was a joke. 79,460 wrote in Biden, but he wasn’t the only write-in on the Dem Ballot that year.
4,752 wrote in Nikki Haley, 2,071 for Donald Trump, 40 for Christie, 33 for Ron DeSantis, 2 for Vivek, 440 for RFK Jr., and 123 for Bernie. Cease Fire was an Andru Volinsky Gaza thing, and the scatter is illegible or otherwise uncountable marks. Much of that will be the undeclared pulling a blue ballot, but we’ve likely got our share of conscientious objectors.
Write-In Joe did win by a large margin, even against all the actual Democrats on the ballot (at least 9). Probably because Dems were asked to turn out and told to write in Joe Biden, and Joe ‘won’ a primary that wasn’t officially scheduled until March, if memory serves. A lot of work and noise for nothing. Pelosi and the DNC anointed Kamala a few months later, but back to 2028.
There is no incumbent to write in, but the primary will happen regardless of the DNC calendar, which was Ray’s point. But Ray, like New Hampshire, is too white. The Dems can’t recognize the primary, leaving NHDems and the meaning of the exercise up in the air —not nearly as important as the money they will lose.
The NH primary has cash cow potential, and there’s an open US Senate seat, so money will flow like blood or water (you choose). Vast sums will be expensed to get the Dem elected so a Republican doesn’t follow retiring Jeanne Shaheen. But there would be more. If the DNC tells candidates it will handicap them for ignoring the schedule, one that would likely have tiny, white, New Hampshire downstream enough to make visiting it an unnecessary expense, the decline in appearances, events, and the fundraising potential will take a hit.
