2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — New Hampshire Democrats on Thursday asked the national party not to “punish” them while overhauling its 2024 presidential primary calendar, arguing that implementing the proposed shakeup may amount to a “poison pill” against their state’s traditional role as among the first to vote.

In a letter to the Democratic National Committee’s rulemaking arm, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley noted that state law mandates that New Hampshire hold the nation’s first presidential primary. He said changing it would require the support of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu and GOP members of the state Legislature, who oppose doing so.

“The DNC has handed New Hampshire Republicans a salient political attack to use against both state and national Democrats,” Buckley wrote. “This is an unfortunate, reckless, and self-inflicted blow.”

A DNC rulemaking committee voted last month to remove Iowa’s caucus as the leadoff of the presidential nominating calendar it has held since 1972 and replace it with South Carolina’s primary on Feb. 3, starting in 2024. Nevada and New Hampshire would go next, three days later, followed by Georgia the following week and then Michigan the week after that. Much of the rest of the country would subsequently vote on Super Tuesday.

President Joe Biden has championed a reordered primary calendar to better reflect the party’s deeply diverse electorate — especially the steadfast support of Black voters, who are prominent in South Carolina. The proposed changes also follow a technical meltdown that marred the results of Iowa’s 2020 caucus. They are set to be approved by the full DNC at a meeting in Philadelphia next month.

The new order may be moot for the next presidential cycle since Biden has said he intends to seek reelection, meaning his party will have little appetite for building out a robust 2024 primary calendar that could allow for challenges from other Democratic candidates. Still, what the national party decides for 2024 could influence primaries in 2028 and beyond, and Buckley’s letter lays bare how not all states are supportive of sweeping changes.

New Hampshire Democrats say that their state has held the nation’s first presidential primary for more than a century and that Iowa only preceded it because of its caucus format. Some have vowed to simply hold the New Hampshire primary first regardless of the calendar set by the national party, but the rules committee proposal says states doing so could face sanctions.

Sununu also wrote his own, separate letter on Thursday blasting South Carolina opening presidential primary voting as “absurd” and saying that “the power brokers in the Democrat party in Washington have made it clear that they believe New Hampshire’s time is up.”

“But I have a message for them and President Biden — you can try to come and take it — but that is Never. Going. To. Happen,” the governor wrote. Sununu added that state officials “across party lines stand in unison” on ensuring that New Hampshire holds the first presidential primary next year.

In the past, states attempting to jump ahead have risked losing delegates to the national party convention, discouraging presidential candidates from spending time campaigning in them. Buckley’s letter decried the “DNC’s threat to punish New Hampshire if it complies with state law.”

The state Democratic Party chairman wrote that any effort by the party or the Biden campaign to “withhold resources from the state until after the primary” would “gravely harm our efforts to build a general election coordinated campaign to reelect the president, elect Democrats up and down the ticket, and give Republicans the chance to out-organize our party in a state that has continued to trend blue.”

The DNC rules committee has also asked states now set to be among the first five voting in its primary to show progress toward expanding access to the ballot box through efforts like easing early voting rules. Buckley said New Hampshire Republicans have also opposed doing that, and called it “another area where the DNC’s requirements serve as nothing more than a seemingly deliberate poison pill for New Hampshire’s primary.”

“We ask that this committee not punish New Hampshire Democrats and recognize the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary in 2024,” he wrote.

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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a member of the Democratic leadership, announced Thursday that she will not run for a fifth term in 2024, a surprise decision that opens up a seat in the key battleground state.

The news shocked many Democrats in the state because the 72-year-old Stabenow had not previously indicated that she would not seek reelection. Stabenow’s impending retirement turns Michigan’s next Senate race into one of the most competitive in the country as Democrats try to preserve their slim majority.

“Inspired by a new generation of leaders, I have decided to pass the torch in the U.S. Senate. I am announcing today that I will not seek reelection and will leave the U.S. Senate at the end of my term on January 3, 2025,” Stabenow said in a statement.

Democrats will face a test to find a candidate with Stabenow’s broad support. On the GOP side, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans, said in a statement after Stabenow’s announcement that it would “aggressively target this seat in 2024.”

While the current political climate in Michigan favors Democrats following a midterm election where they flipped the state House and Senate, the state is still expected to be one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds in the 2024 presidential election. Only one Michigan Republican has held a seat in the Senate in the past 40 years.

Among the Democrats whose names began circulating after Stabenow’s announcement are Pete Buttigieg, the federal transportation secretary who ran for president in 2020 and moved from Indiana to northern Michigan last year to be closer to his husband’s family; Elissa Slotkin, a congresswoman first elected in 2018 and coming off a decisive victory in November in one of the country’s most competitive House districts; and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who has seen her profile rise since going viral with a speech denouncing Republicans over “grooming” accusations.

Buttigieg said in a statement that he was “fully focused” on his Cabinet post and was “not seeking any other job.”

Stabenow joined Congress in 1996 after serving in the Michigan Legislature. In 2000, she made history by becoming the first woman to be elected senator in Michigan, defeating a Republican incumbent. She turned back GOP challenges in 2006 and 2012 and defeated Republican John James by 6.5 percentage points in her last election in 2018. James was elected to the House in November.

Stabenow is the longest-serving member of the state’s congressional delegation. She is chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, making her the No. 3 ranking party leader, and heads the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

Stabenow most recently has been involved in bipartisan legislation aimed at increasing oversight of cryptocurrencies. She has also led efforts to expand and increase funding for mental health care both nationally and in Michigan.

Praise for Stabenow began pouring in after her retirement announcement.

Democratic Gary Peters, the state’s junior senator who has served with Stabenow since 2015, said she would leave a legacy “as a champion for children, women and families, workers, manufacturing and our auto industry, mental health care and the Great Lakes.”

Buttigieg said Stabenow was “a force in the Senate” while McMorrow called her a “trailblazer.”

“No one has been more instrumental in building the infrastructure of the Michigan Democratic Party to this historic moment we’re in today,” McMorrow said.

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