Iowa surrenders, falls back to Super Tuesday for Democrats in 2024

ST. LOUIS — Iowa Democrats will surrender their first-in-the-nation caucuses next year, party officials said Friday, while Democrats in New Hampshire — still fighting with the Democratic National Committee — moved closer to holding a rogue primary.

Iowa’s influential perch within the Democratic Party formally came to an end in a windowless hotel ballroom here, where members of the Democratic National Committee voted to accept Iowa’s plan to release its presidential preference numbers on March 5, Super Tuesday. Iowa officials said they will lobby for an earlier nominating contest in 2028.

But New Hampshire, as expected, is still not budging on its early primary, and DNC members officially declared it “not compliant.”

“We've made our decision about the sequence of these early states and we're going to stick to that sequence,” said Elaine Kamarck, a DNC member.

The votes out of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws meeting on Friday cap off more than a year of internal party machinations over how to retool the party’s presidential nominating calendar, prioritizing battleground states with more diverse populations over Iowa, long the party’s first-in-the-nation caucus state.

Following a plan blessed by President Joe Biden, next year’s nominating calendar will kick off with South Carolina on Feb. 3, followed by Nevada on Feb. 6 and Michigan on Feb. 27. Georgia, which was initially elevated to a top slot, wasn’t able to change its date, due to its Republican-controlled legislature and governor’s mansion. That means Iowa is effectively eliminated from the early-state process in the 2024 cycle.

The initial DNC schedule placed New Hampshire on Feb. 6, sharing the date with Nevada.

But New Hampshire has a law that says the state must hold its primary a week before any similar contest. With Republicans who control state government refusing to change the rule, New Hampshire Democrats say they have no choice but to hold their primary when the secretary of state sets it. And New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said the state will go first “no matter what.”

Earlier this year, New Hampshire was granted an extension to mid-October to comply with the DNC’s rules. By declaring the state “non-compliant” on Friday, New Hampshire Democrats have another 30 days to “come into compliance.” But if they don’t, the DNC will consider sanctions against the state.

"We believe the president's name won't be on the ballot. We don't know who will be filing on the ballot," New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told DNC members. "What we're determined is to not allow any of those people to claim they have won the New Hampshire primary."

Democrats led by former state party chair and DNC member Kathy Sullivan and veteran Democratic operative Jim Demers "are going to conduct a write-in effort to ensure the president receives the strong support,” Buckley said. Both Demers and Sullivan previously told POLITICO informal conversations about a write-in campaign have been underway among New Hampshire Democrats for some time. Demers said Friday that a final decision is likely to be made in the next two weeks.

Based on party rules, if New Hampshire still holds its primary, the state would automatically lose half its delegates. The DNC has also broadly empowered the national party chair to take any other “appropriate steps” to enforce the early window.

"In 2024, I'm pretty sure that Joe Biden will not put his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot,” Kamarck said, discussing potential sanctions for states that ignore the DNC’s directives. “If he did, this would look really weird, since he was the one who said he wanted to have South Carolina first.”

New Hampshire Democrats could consider holding a party-run primary, going around the state's Republican-controlled government — a strategy deployed by other states. Buckley has rejected that idea, calling it a logistical nightmare.

“Absolutely impossible,” he told POLITICO in May. “Where would I rent 2,000 voting machines? Hire 1,500 people to run the polls? Rent 300 accessible voting locations? Hire security? Print 500,000 ballots. Process 30,000 absentee ballots.”

Iowa’s demise — at least for 2024 — is clearer cut. State Democrats came under fire from the national party for their handling of the 2020 Democratic presidential caucuses, when they failed to declare a winner for several days. The state also faced stiff criticism for its predominantly white population, which Democratic Party leaders said wasn’t representative of the party as a whole.

But for Iowa Democrats, this is a long game. In a letter to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said she’d received “repeated reassurance from the co-chairs and this committee” that Iowa will “compete strongly for a significant voice” in future early nominating contests.

Republicans are still expected to hold their first nominating contest of 2024 in Iowa, on Jan. 15.

Democrats in the state said they will mail presidential preference cards on Jan. 12, while holding their in-person precinct caucuses on Jan. 15, timed with the Republican presidential primary caucuses. But to comply with the DNC — and minimize the significance of the contest — the Iowa Democratic Party plans to accept preference cards postmarked any time on or before March 5, Super Tuesday, and won’t release the results of their mail-in caucus until then.