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President Joe Biden said Thursday that Democrats should give up restrictive caucuses and prioritise diversity at the start of their presidential primary calendar dealing a major blow to Iowa’s decadeslong status as the state that leads off the process.
In a letter to the rule-making arm of the Democratic National Committee, Biden did not mention specific states he’d like to see go first. But he has told Democrats he wants South Carolina moved to the first position, according to three people familiar with his recommendation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The president’s direction comes as the DNC rules committee gathers in Washington on Friday to vote on shaking up the presidential primary calendar starting in 2024. Members now expect to approve new rules putting South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day a week later.
Georgia and Michigan would move into the top five as new early states, and each would hold primaries in subsequent weeks, committee members say. The two battlegrounds were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory over then-President Donald Trump, who had won both states in his 2016 White House campaign.
Much of the rest of the country would vote as part of Super Tuesday soon afterward.
Such changes are set to come after years of calls from many top Democrats for the voting calendar to better reflect the party’s deeply diverse base than mostly white Iowa, which holds the country’s first caucus, and New Hampshire, which holds the first primary. The new calendar would still have to be approved by the full DNC in a vote likely to come early next year, but the DNC will almost certainly heed the rule-making panel’s recommendations.
The proposed order of the early states was first reported by The .
For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process, » Biden wrote in a letter on personal stationery that did not carry the White House seal.
