Democrats are moving forward with a plan to move their first primary for presidential races out of New Hampshire. Earlier this week, the Democratic National Committee voted on a new calendar, stripping New Hampshire of its top spot and handing the title to South Carolina. GBH politics reporter and Talking Politics host Adam Reilly joined Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to talk about what this will mean for New Hampshire and New England politics and what exactly will happen, given that Republicans have not changed their calendar. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Paris Alston: Adam, this happened pretty quickly. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that you were initially telling us about it. What's the plan that the DNC voted on?
Adam Reilly: New Hampshire will no longer have the first in the nation primary. That honor is going to go to South Carolina. Three days later, New Hampshire would go along with Nevada if the state makes some changes that the DNC is requiring, including repealing their law that says that they always have to have the first primary in the nation. But this is where things get messy because that's not going to happen. Republicans control the legislature in New Hampshire; Republicans control the governorship. They have no interest in going along with the DNC plan. If anything, they're interested in using it as a cudgel to hurt Democrats in the state. So those changes aren't going to get made. And Democrats, it's worth noting, want to keep their first in the nation primary. And they have said, we're going to go ahead and do this, never mind what the DNC and President Biden are pushing. So it's a great big mess. It's going to be fascinating to watch unfold.
Jeremy Siegel: Is there any indication of where true authority stands in this? I mean, New Hampshire is a state with real laws, one of those laws being that it has the first primary in the nation. The DNC is, at the end of the day, just a party organization, right? Could they punish or blacklist New Hampshire if they kept their date and didn't go along with the new rules?
Reilly: Yeah, there are indications that they're going to deny New Hampshire some of their delegates at the party's convention. There's other sanctions that you could imagine taking place if a candidate, for example, chooses to campaign in New Hampshire, if they insist on going first, despite the DNC's directive, that candidate might lose time on debate stages down the road. So there's different ways it could play out. But your point about authority and where it ultimately originates, I think, is crucial. Because the Democratic comeback from people like Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, the U.S. senators and other members of the all-Democratic congressional delegation that New Hampshire has — they have said, essentially, the DNC did not create our first in the nation primary. We did it. We've cultivated it for over a century. You don't have the authority to take it away from us. The DNC has the authority to sanction since they control the nominating process. But New Hampshire ultimately can hold their primary whenever they want.
"If they insist on going first, despite the DNC's directive, that candidate might lose time on debate stages down the road."-Adam Reilly
Alston: So, Adam, regardless, New Hampshire is going to go forward with having its primary first. But is that going to then turn into a scenario in which you have some Democrats or Republicans voting there and some voting elsewhere?
Reilly: I think just to reiterate what you said at the outset, all indications are that New Hampshire is just going to ignore what the DNC has said the DNC wants to happen. So if I were a betting man, I would bet all the money I have — not that much, but I'd bet it all — on New Hampshire holding the first primary in the nation, both for Democrats and Republicans.
Alston: We've got to find out if that falls into the new sports betting laws?
Reilly: Right. On the Republican side, they're going to just do things the way they've always done them, while also pointing out that national Democrats tried to take away this treasured New Hampshire institution. They're going to be constantly reminding people of that and every Republican who wants to be president — and it's going to be a contested, wide open field — they're all going to be coming up to New Hampshire to make their case. The Democratic side looks like it's going to be different in 2024 because it seems like it's going to be Joe Biden seeking reelection. We don't know that for sure, but all signs point in that direction. So what you might see then is Biden ignoring the primary that New Hampshire is going ahead and having, and maybe some marginal Democrats like Marianne Williamson from the last cycle has indicated she's going to run again. They might come up to New Hampshire and try to make life difficult for the president.
But I think that if this new schedule holds in 2028 — and that's a big question, because the DNC is going to revisit it. But if we had this in the next open primary for Democrats, that's where things would get really, really interesting because Democrats would have to make a choice: Democratic candidates, do you want to go and participate in New Hampshire's primary that they're holding in contravention to the DNC's wishes and risk looking like someone who doesn't care about racial equity? Because that's one of the big arguments for South Carolina going first. It's got a lot more Black voters than New Hampshire or Iowa, which used to obviously go early on in the process as well. If you're a Democratic presidential hopeful, do you want to be accused of basically ignoring that as a valid concern down the road? It's a very difficult calculus for candidates to engage in. We're not going to see that, I don't think, in this cycle, but we might see it in 2028.
