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South Carolina is on course to remain the lead-off primary in the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nominating calendar, after landing a key party committee’s recommendation.
The Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) powerful Rules and Bylaws panel, meeting in the nation’s capital on Friday, picked South Carolina over Nevada to hold the party’s first presidential nominating contest in 2028, a move that will likely maintain a key role in the primary calendar for Black voters, who are a crucial part of the Democrats’ base.
The vote comes after intense lobbying by both states, as well as by New Hampshire, and Iowa over the past year to hold the much-coveted lead-off Democratic primary in the race for the White House. And the battle between South Carolina and Nevada was seen as a struggle between rewarding Black voters, who have long been loyal Democratic voters, and outreach to Latino voters, with whom President Donald Trump and Republicans made major gains in the 2024 election, handing Democrats major setbacks.
The panel also voted to allow Nevada, New Hampshire, Michigan, Virginia, and New Mexico to hold primaries in the early voting window, before the rest of the states hold nominating contests starting ahead of Super Tuesday.
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According to the panel, South Carolina would hold its primary on Jan. 22, 2028, with Nevada going second on Feb. 1, 2028, followed by New Hampshire on Feb. 8, 2028. New Mexico would hold the fourth contest, on Feb. 15, 2028, followed by Michigan on Feb. 22, 2028, and Virginia on Feb. 29, 2028.
The Rules and Bylaws Committee’s proposals on the calendar will face a final vote by the DNC’s entire membership when the party holds its summer meeting next month in Austin, Texas.
Minyon Moore, the panel’s co-chair, said that South Carolina “will emerge as the first contest.”
South Carolina supporters pointed to the recent Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act, and the ongoing redistricting battles, and argued that the party needs to reaffirm its commitment to Black voters when their electoral strength has been diminished.
Nevada allies, meanwhile, pointed to the western battleground state’s diverse electorate of Latino, Black, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, and its working class population as the ideal state for Democratic White House hopefuls to make their case.
New Hampshire held the lead-off presidential primary for both Democrats and Republicans for a century, and while the GOP adhered to tradition in the last race for the White House, the DNC upended its calendar, placing South Carolina ahead of the Granite State. The move was seen as an unwanted distraction for Democrats during the 2024 primaries.
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National Democrats for years had knocked both Iowa — whose caucuses for 50 years led off the party’s nominating calendar until 2024 — and New Hampshire as unrepresentative of the party as a whole because the states have largely white populations with few major urban areas. Nevada and South Carolina, which are much more diverse than either Iowa or New Hampshire, were added near the top of the Democratic calendar two decades ago to increase the diversity of the early states’ electorate
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New Hampshire Democrats have long pushed back, saying the state’s rich tradition of grassroots, retail politics, its well-informed electorate, its high percentage of voter participation and its longtime status as a key general election swing state make it the perfect locale to hold the first-in-the-nation primary.
After the DNC removed New Hampshire from the top of its 2024 calendar, putting the state second along with Nevada, the Granite State still moved to the head of the line. Adhering to a half-century-old law that mandates the Granite State to hold the first presidential primary a week ahead of any similar contest, New Hampshire Secretary of State Dave Scanlan scheduled the Democratic and GOP presidential primary contests for Jan. 23, 2024.
The Democratic contest, which was held before South Carolina and Nevada, ended up being an unsanctioned election, with the DNC banning the state’s delegates from attending that summer’s nominating convention. The DNC later made peace with New Hampshire and reinstated their convention delegates.
But this time around, the party is proposing much more lethal sanctions against states that go rogue, as well as tough penalties on candidates who campaign in those states, in hopes of preventing unsanctioned contests.
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“Because of this calendar, our candidates will be tested,” said DNC Chair Ken Martin. “Because of this process, millions more Americans will be heard. Because of this committee, our party is and will be stronger. And because of the work that all of us have done together, our eventual nominee will enter the general election, prepared to unite our coalition to compete in every part of the country and to win back the White House.”
But longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, in a statement after the vote on the calendar, argued, “Today’s vote shows that many party insiders have learned nothing from 2024. New Hampshire has a proven track record of testing our candidates with a rigorous, fair, and efficient process, yet those qualities did not prevail. This committee’s vote does not change the realities governing New Hampshire’s primary, which are beyond the control of both this committee and our state party.”
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Nevada Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno emphasized in a statement, “As an early state and the first true test of a candidate’s ability to win in a general election, we will play a critical role in the nomination process.”
While Democrats have argued over their 2028 calendar, the rival Republican National Committee announced earlier this year that their nominating schedule, with Iowa and New Hampshire as the lead-off contests, would be unchanged.
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