As an early supporter of Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Kermit Williams of Wilton was invited to drive Biden to several events in southern New Hampshire.
That experience included trekking through a couple snowstorms with the future president.
“I told Joe, ‘It’s good you have someone from New Hampshire driving you, and not someone from Delaware or further south, because we know how to handle the snow,” said Williams, who served as a state representative from 2012 to 2020 and failed in a bid to return to the Legislature this year. “He said, ‘Well, I’m glad you’re here.’”
Last week, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee endorsed Biden’s proposal to make South Carolina the first Democratic primary state in 2024, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day, then Georgia, then Michigan. The full DNC will vote on the schedule next year.
Under state law, New Hampshire’s primary must be first, which Gov. Chris Sununu, U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster and U.S. Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen are among those who have stated that the state will remain first in the nation, no matter what the DNC decides. However, even if the secretary of state moves the primary forward, perhaps into the end of 2023, Williams worries that a push from national Democrats would keep candidates from coming to the state.
“If the candidates don’t come, we can vote, but it certainly won’t be the same,” Williams said, citing the “outsize presence” New Hampshire currently has due to being first and its small size providing candidates with the opportunity to meet voters in a way that would be difficult in a larger state. “If they take away that outsize presence, it will sort of be a hollow victory.”
According to Christina Cliff, associate professor of political science at Franklin Pierce University, the logic behind removing New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status is sound, “but it also fundamentally flawed and an overly simplistic ‘solution’ that will likely create other problems.”
“The argument that New Hampshire (and Iowa) should no longer be the first primary events of presidential election cycles is based almost entirely on the fact that New Hampshire and Iowa are relatively small populations that lack diversity,”she stated. “These are facts, and facts that cannot and should not be ignored.”
Cliff agreed that getting more diverse voters involved in the early presidential primaries is important and should have been addressed long ago, but that the answer isn’t to abandon small states.
“New Hampshire, and Iowa to a lesser extent, have spent decades developing engaged voters. There is both a formal and informal infrastructure that facilitates voters’ interactions with candidates,” she stated. “New Hampshire voters want and expect to interact with every presidential candidate and assess their qualifications. Long-shot candidates will draw crowds, and the ‘big names’ will still have to earn the voters’ approval. The small states, and the small-state political environment, is fundamentally different from what campaigning looks like in South Carolina, Nevada, and other, larger states.”
Instead, Cliff believes parties and candidates should stay in the race longer.
“If the Democrats, or the Republicans, can’t afford to spend campaign funds on 13 candidates through more than one or two primaries, then perhaps they shouldn’t encourage 13 candidates to run. And candidates should persevere – if they sincerely believe that they are qualified to run the country, why would a couple of early setbacks be sufficient for them to give up?” she stated. “The states with early primaries are not the ones letting down voters. It’s the candidates and parties that are limiting the ability of a diverse population to have equal primary choices. The parties shouldn’t be penalizing engaged voters because of their own lack of staying power.”