Dems brace for battle over 2028 primary calendar to ‘explode’

The shadow primary for president in 2028 is suddenly igniting a more immediate campaign: the fight among states to hold the first nominating contest.

South Carolina hosted more than a half-dozen potential candidates this summer. Another half-dozen dropped into New Hampshire, including Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego on Friday. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Rep. Ro Khanna of California both popped into Nevada this month. Michigan and Iowa are getting in on the action, too.

All of that activity is putting pressure on the Democratic National Committee to move quickly to set the presidential primary calendar because “candidates need the rules of the road,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who was elected to the DNC’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee, charged with setting the presidential primary calendar.

“Candidates are going to be strategic, and the calendar is a big factor for them,” Dingell said. “People need to know, we’ve already got people campaigning.”

Boosters for some early states are planning to meet with DNC members and other fellow early state representatives on the sidelines of the national party’s summer meeting in Minneapolis this week, according to three people involved in the discussions. And even though the primary calendar isn’t actually on the committee’s agenda, they said it would clearly dominate informal conversations. As one member put it, the behind-the-scenes lobbying blitz is going to “explode” once everyone is in one place for the DNC meeting.

One DNC member, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly, said DNC Chair Ken Martin told them he wanted the primary calendar to be sorted out quickly, potentially as soon as the end of 2025 or early 2026, and has urged rules members to expect related meetings throughout this fall.

“A lot of these [early state] folks will be having conversations over drinks at the hotel bar with various [DNC] members during the next few days,” said Trav Robertson, the former South Carolina Democratic Party chair. “It’ll be very, very interesting to see this thing get started again … who is aggressive, who is more subtle, [and] do alliances form?”

In a statement, DNC deputy communications director Abhi Rahman said the organization “is committed to running a fair, rigorous, and transparent process for the 2028 presidential nominating calendar. All states will have an opportunity to participate.” The DNC also reiterated the party process for setting the 2028 primary calendar hasn’t formally begun, and discussions will start later this year.

None of which is blunting states’ scramble to privately lobby for their cause. Democrats in potential early states are “rolling out the red carpet” to entice 2028 candidates to show up so the states “can stay relevant, too,” a national Democratic consultant said, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly.

The Democratic early-state window blew open in 2022, when then-President Joe Biden elevated South Carolina to first place, added Michigan and eliminated Iowa, after its disastrous 2020 caucuses. New Hampshire, pointing to its state law that it must hold the first-in-the-nation primary, jumped ahead of South Carolina in 2024 by running its own unsanctioned primary.

The resulting free-for-all leaves an open race to either stay — or rise up — in the early state order for 2028.

South Carolina’s many summer visits included multi-day swings from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Khanna. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has keynoted speeches in Michigan and South Carolina. Pritzker, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Gallego dropped into New Hampshire — with Khanna and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin set to follow. Nevada hosted Pritzker and Khanna this month. Even Iowa saw some action, drawing town halls from Gallego and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“I won’t tell the DNC what to do,” Gallego said Friday in New Hampshire, demurring when asked about his preferred primary state order.

But Gallego said “politics, unfortunately, has changed” since he called in 2021 for the DNC to ditch Iowa and New Hampshire for more diverse states like South Carolina and Nevada. New Hampshire will “probably be one of those really pivotal states” for Democrats to try to win back independent voters and “definitely has to be in the mix” of early states, he said.

It’s not yet clear how the DNC’s rules committee might approach revamping the calendar.

In 2022, the DNC auditioned dozens of states for the early window, including presentations from elected officials and public lobbying efforts. Committee members said they wanted to prioritize regional, geographic and racial diversity, as well as battleground states with less costly media markets — priorities that members said they expect to carry over into future debates.

“When we have a president in White House, it limits the party’s ability to think through, on its own, what’s best for its electoral strategy, what’s best for the party, and right now, it’s the time to experiment, to question, to put all the cards on the table and see what makes sense,” said one rules committee member, granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive process. “I suspect the outreach [from early states] is going to amp up quite a bit now.”

It’s also a bigger committee that will weigh in on the calendar, as Martin expanded the group to include 16 new, elected seats, selected by other DNC members rather than the chair.

“Half or two-thirds have never been to an RBC meeting,” said a second rules committee member. “It’s time to make friends, so there will be lots of conversations [around the DNC meeting].”

But many of the challenges the DNC faced in 2022 are expected to resurface, especially surrounding New Hampshire. Even if state Democrats were on board with changing state law requiring its primary to be held before any other similar contest, the Republicans who run the capitol are not. That standoff exploded into a bitter intraparty feud in 2024 that led Biden to bypass the state’s primary — though he ultimately won on a write-in campaign.

Prominent Democrats are pointing to the parade of potential 2028 candidates who looked past their near-blacklisting to attend their convention breakfasts last summer, and who continue to headline party dinners and campaign for congressional candidates in the state, to bolster their argument for restoring New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status.

Gallego continued that march of candidates when he appeared at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics & Eggs” speaker series — a requisite stop for would-be presidential contenders of both parties. He also dined privately with some of the state’s Democratic power players; held meet and greets with Manchester, Portsmouth and Nashua Democrats; handed out doughnuts to union shipyard workers and headlined a fundraiser for Democratic state lawmakers — going through the motions of a potential candidate even as he publicly downplayed a bid.

Slotkin, a freshman senator from Michigan seen as a rising star in the party, is keynoting a Manchester Democrats’ fundraiser on Oct. 15, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO.

Top Democrats, including longtime strategist Jim Demers and a trio of DNC members, are courting others through a town hall series Khanna will kick off this weekend. Democrats and Republicans alike are personally appealing to would-be 2028 contenders to keep New Hampshire first: Chris Ager, the former state GOP chair who recently launched a nonprofit to promote the primary, waited out Gallego’s photo line at Politics & Eggs to encourage the senator to support New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status. Gallego was noncommittal, Ager told POLITICO.

“I have had, and will continue to have conversations with RBC members about the formal nominating process for our presidential candidates,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley said in a statement. “We expect these conversations will happen throughout this week and continue on as the RBC decides on a process that gives each state an equal playing field.”

Beyond New Hampshire, Nevada is, once again, mounting its push to be the first nominating state. The state’s backers point to its racially and ethnically diverse electorate and relatively small size, a pair of important priorities for the DNC. It’s also a union-heavy state that represents many working class voters that Democrats struggled to win over in 2024. Trump won the state last year, the first time a Republican had done so in two decades.

“Making Nevada first is a strategic decision for national Democrats, given the party’s need to invest in winning back working class and Latino voters. We are also the only state that fits the DNC’s criteria of diverse, small, accessible and a battleground state,” said Molly Forgey, an adviser to the Nevada Democratic Party. “We’re going to ramp up our conversations with members about Nevada next week.”

South Carolina, which jumped to the front of the line in 2024, is looking to hold on to its position. Backers argue that its significant Black population, a core part of the Democratic Party, as well as its small size fits the DNC’s priorities.

“We are proceeding as first in the nation,” said Christale Spain, the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “We’ll start meeting and discussing the calendar, but candidates are used to coming here,” as the first-in-the-South state for the last two decades, “[and] we will be vigorous in our approach to maintaining [it].”

Iowa, long the first-in-the-nation caucus state, is looking for a way back into the process, too. Last week, the Iowa Democratic Party launched a survey of its voters, asking whether it should defy the DNC and host an unsanctioned caucus.

Rita Hart, the Iowa Democratic Party chair, underlined Gallego’s comments on his recent Iowa trip, when he “acknowledg[ed] that ‘Iowa has to be part of our governing coalition.’”

“That starts now with our conversations with the DNC about the shortcomings of the Biden calendar and with our fellow Iowa Democrats who are ready to lead the party and the country out of the hole that Republicans have dug for us,” Hart added.

Adam Wren contributed to this report.