The Democratic National Committee is delaying until the November midterm elections a long-awaited decision on reordering the top of their 2024 presidential calendar. The DNC was expected to decide as early as this coming week whether Iowa and New Hampshire — which have held the first two contests in presidential primaries and the DNC’s caucus schedule for half a century — will retain their traditional primary seats or the party would shake up the order and put a more nuanced situation in the original position. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, in a letter to party officials obtained by Fox News on Saturday, explained that they will withdraw any decision about which states to propose for carve-out status, meaning those states will must maintain primary nominations for the presidential election before March 2024, when the remaining states are allowed to begin holding their contests. Rules and Bylaws co-chairs James Roosevelt, Jr. and Mignon Moore wrote that they would “delay a committee decision on the pre-window line until after the midterm elections.” RNC STICKS WITH DELIVERY, MAKES NO CHANGES TO 2024 PRIMARY CALENDAR Iowa Caucuses on display at the Iowa State Historical Museum, January 15, 2020 (Fox News) “After the midterms, we will reconvene to update our assessment of the candidate pool and work toward a final decision to bring to the full DNC for a vote, which DNC leadership has assured us they will do immediately after the midterms. elections. is possible,” added Roosevelt and Moore. Earlier this year, the DNC moved to claim Iowa — whose half-century caucuses kicked off the nominating calendar — New Hampshire, which held its first primary in a century, and Nevada and South Carolina — held the last two cycles the third and fourth contests — to reapply for early status in calendar 2024. Other states interested in moving to the top of the calendar were also allowed to apply. The DNC is also considering allowing a fifth state to gain carve-out status. The four existing early states plus 13 others are still in contention to land the state before the window. The knock for years against Iowa and New Hampshire among many Democrats has been that they are too White, lack significant urban areas and do not represent a Democratic Party that has become increasingly diverse in recent decades. Nevada and South Carolina are much more different than Iowa or New Hampshire. SEE THE LATEST 2022 FOX NEWS ELECTION POWER RANKINGS Complicating matters, Nevada Democrats last year passed a bill into law that would have turned the state’s presidential caucus into a primary and aimed to move the contest into first place in the race for the White House, ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. And the Iowa issues compounded the bad coverage of the 2020 caucuses, which became a national and international story and an embarrassment for Iowa Democrats as well as the DNC. The current conventional wisdom is that Iowa, due to its 2020 caucus reporting problems and the fact that it has leaned toward the GOP in recent general election cycles, is likely to lose the top spot, while New Hampshire is expected to potentially preserve early statehood, thanks in part to holding a smooth primary process that allows independents to vote in either party’s runoffs — and which remains a hotly contested general election battleground. New Hampshire has held the nation’s first primary in a century. A sign outside the state capitol in Concord, NH marks the state’s prized primary status. (Fox News) But a major sticking point is New Hampshire’s state law that shields the nation’s first-in-the-nation status, giving the secretary of state the power to move up the contest date to protect the primary tradition. A showdown would likely result if the DNC kept New Hampshire second on the calendar but moved another state’s primary to the top of the order. The Rules and Regulations Committee was expected to make a final recommendation when it meets again in the coming days. And the full DNC membership would have voted on the recommendation when the national party holds its summer meeting in early September. But that timeline has now been pushed back to after midterms. The decision to delay the decision-making process will likely come as a relief to New Hampshire Democrats, who had expressed concerns that if they had lost their coveted first-past-the-post state, it could have been detrimental to Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. -election offer this November. Hassan, a former governor in the key battleground state for the general election, faces a potentially difficult re-election, and Republicans in the state have said they would criticize the senator for losing the presidency. The RNC will announce the convention city The Republican National Committee sticks to tradition. The full RNC membership in April voted unanimously to make no changes to the 2024 presidential nominating calendar, keeping Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada as the four early voting states. The vote, at the RNC’s spring training meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, endorsed recommendations approved by a committee at the national party’s winter meeting in February. That panel was chaired by Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufman and included the GOP chairs of the three other early voting states. MILWAUKEE AND NASHVILLE FINAL TWO CITIES IN THE RUN FOR 2024 GOP CONVENTION The RNC gathers later this week in Chicago for its annual summer meeting and is expected to vote on which city will host its 2024 presidential nominating convention. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Nashville, Tennessee are the two finalist cities, with political pundits considering Milwaukee the favorite. Sununu in Iowa Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who some political prognosticators see as a possible 2024 GOP White House contender, was in Iowa this weekend. Sununu participated in the GenZ Summer Summit Run, where he, along with his father – former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu – and former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, highlighted the importance of Iowa’s favorite places and the New Hampshire to launch nomination calendar. Run GenZ describes itself as a nonprofit organization focused on “empowering and mentoring conservative leaders from Generation Z to pursue leadership opportunities, including public office that allows them to work toward a more constitutionally focused government.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Sununu, in an interview with Fox News Digital two weeks ago, dismissed speculation about 2024, saying he has his eyes set on re-election as governor this year. “I’m not thinking about the last re-election. Right. If I don’t close the deal in November and get those votes and go out and talk to voters, then nothing else matters. So no, I’m just focused on New Hampshire,” Sununu said. Paul Steinhauser is a political reporter based in New Hampshire.
