It took months for Democrats to settle on their primary presidential calendar, an extended battle that ended up booting Iowa and New Hampshire from the mix and vaulting South Carolina to the top of the pack.
Now that all could be scrapped.
With President Joe Biden soon leaving the White House after having dictated the order of states in 2024, Democratic National Committee members are already readying for a fight to reorder the primary contests in the next presidential election.
“The 2024 calendar will absolutely not be the calendar for 2028,” said Nebraska state party chair Jane Kleeb.
At least half a dozen DNC members, state chairs and DNC officials told NBC News there will be a full reexamination of the order of the states before the 2028 Democratic primary.
While some expressed concern that the states really didn’t get a chance to demonstrate their worth with Biden running again at the time, most advocated for a full-scale change, saying the order of states in the primary earlier this year was designed by and meant to benefit Biden before he dropped the nomination.
Under the current plan, South Carolina went first, then Nevada, Georgia and Michigan. It was the first time in decades that the primary was revamped to exclude the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa and the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire. The idea was to give an opportunity to more diverse populations — like Black voters in South Carolina and Latino voters in Nevada — to have an early say in the process.
Biden pushed for South Carolina to be the first early state after it gave him a critical win in 2020 — and set him on the path to the nomination — that the earlier states did not.
After Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss last week, the Democratic primary is expected to explode with contenders, meaning the fight over the order of the early states could be a brutal one, with each attempting to lobby for the state that could most benefit them.
“The process has to be rigorous, efficient and fair, and we have to make sure that it’s open and transparent,” said a state chair who asked not to be named.
It’s expected to be one of the issues that arises in the campaign for the next chair to head the Democratic National Committee. Those potentially in the mix for the post include Minnesota party chair Ken Martin; Wisconsin party chair Ben Wikler; former New Orleans mayor, Biden adviser and campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu; 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley; and former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to sources with knowledge of the contest.
Whatever calendar is settled on is a major factor to those presidential primary contenders, who spend most of their time and resources in those states, which serve to winnow down the pack before moving on to Super Tuesday.
But one DNC official said Democrats who change the lineup do so at their own peril.
“My fair warning: You can tinker but you’re playing with fire there, so just be careful," this person said.
“You better not take for granted and spend all your time in battleground states, give them cake and those other states get crumbs,” the official added.
Black women still make up the loyal electorate to Democrats and that appears to be true again from early voting data, the official said. Scrapping a state like South Carolina from the top of the list may only alienate those voters.
“If you want to talk about not winning,” the person said, “piss them off.”
