"Should Iowa Democrats go 'rogue' and go first with 2028 caucuses? Survey seeks party input"

Brianne Pfannenstiel at The Des Moines Register digs in on where Iowa Democrats are with the 2028 presidential primary calendar process at the starting line:

"As national Democrats begin gearing up for a conversation about the 2028 presidential nominating calendar, Iowa Democrats are asking themselves whether they want to obey the national party’s process or go 'rogue' with a renewed push for first-in-the-nation status.

"In a new survey set released to Iowa Democrats Thursday, Aug. 21, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart writes that although the party’s focus is on winning elections in 2026, 'discussions about the 2028 nominating process have begun.'

“'Without an incumbent president on the ballot, we are likely to have one of the deepest and longest nominating campaigns in history,' she wrote in the survey introduction. 'Unlike 2024, the outcome of the presidential nominating process will be in doubt. As Iowa Democrats, we have choices to make about how to proceed.'”

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Noteworthy: Chair Hart struck a pragmatic tone at the outset of the national party's calendar deliberations. While the survey teases the idea that Hawkeye state Democrats may go rogue for 2028, Hart pointed out that 1) it is still much too early and 2) there are a lot of moving parts that will affect what the state party may do with regard to the caucuses next time around, including how the party performs in state contests during the 2026 midterms. 

Others within the party were much more forceful, recently removed DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee member (and Iowa national committeeman) Scott Brennan among them. "Full speed ahead and damn the DNC," he said, striking a defiant posture. 

Of course, Iowa Democrats can be defiant without actually breaking any likely DNC rules for 2028. One should expect the state party to hold early caucuses again during the next cycle. It is, after all, state law. What those early -- January? February? -- caucuses do, however, matters. If they merely select delegates to go to the next step of the caucus/convention process as was the case for the 2024 cycle, then Iowa Democrats will not have held their "first determining step," as the DNC calls it, and will be rules-compliant. 

What matters is not that preliminary selection process. The part that will be and always has been important, not to mention determinative, is the allocation process. If the results of any caucus vote determines which candidates win how ever many delegate slots -- allocation -- then such a caucus would run afoul of DNC rules. 

And it is worth raising another reality: Now that Iowa Democrats have held a mail-in party-run presidential primary, it will be hard for the state party to make the case for returning to the in-person caucuses alone, rogue or not. That is a much more difficult argument to make before the national party and to rank-and-file Democrats in the Hawkeye state. 

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Related at FHQ+:

Background on 2023 state law change and the implications for Iowa Democrats

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More:

Iowa Capital Dispatch: Iowa Democrats launch survey, discussion on future of presidential caucuses

Associated Press: Iowa Democrats consider bringing back lead off caucuses, even if it means going ‘rogue’ in 2028

"Inside the Dems' fight to be 'the new Iowa' and hold the first 2028 primary"

Alex Thompson at Axios pulls back the curtain on the beginning of the Democrats' process to set the 2028 early calendar :

"Democratic Party officials are quietly battling over which state will be the first to vote in the 2028 presidential primary — a fight that's set to break into the open next week, when the officials meet in Minneapolis.

"Nevada, New Hampshire, and Michigan are currently the frontrunners to be 'the new Iowa,' and lead off the 2028 Democratic primary season, according to several people familiar with the Rules and Bylaws committee that will determine the order."

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Noteworthy: First of all, I don't know how much "fight[ing]" or "battling" there is over the calendar at this point. As Thompson notes much further on in the story than was probably necessary, the process is at the starting line. If there are fights now, then that portends a likely ugly process. It won't be. It will be politics as it usually is. State parties will jockey for early spots, candidates will push their preferences (directly or through proxies/supporters on the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and those members of the panel will have their own opinions as well. There will be some push and pull, and things may get heated along the way -- they probably won't (although it may be reported that way) -- but the calendar is a collective action problem the party's new (as of the 2024 cycle) process has already resolved once. 

As for "the new Iowa," well, Michigan was already the new Iowa in 2024. The Great Lakes state became the midwestern state in the early window. And, yes, South Carolina was the new first (sanctioned) state in the process as well. Would Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan not be vying to be the new South Carolina? 

And finally, this passage from Thompson's piece merits a response:

"For decades, Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary kicked off the presidential primary season.

"But the order of contests has become a free-for-all since Iowa botched its caucuses in 2020, and then-President Biden changed the calendar in 2024 to favor his re-election bid by moving up the primary in Biden-friendly South Carolina."

I don't know that Iowa's caucus experience in 2020 triggered the reexamination of the calendar. It was a part of it, but the DNC was already moving in the direction of diversifying the early calendar and opening the process up for 2024. The party voluntarily moved toward an orderly process -- not a free-for-all -- whereby Iowa and New Hampshire (and Nevada and South Carolina) no longer received (near) automatic waivers to hold early contests. Rather, all state parties -- those that wanted to anyway -- could pitch the party on being early. 

And then as now, the early favorites to win those slots were states that were mostly already early. That's the story here: that Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan are the states being talked about now as the possible first Democratic primary state for 2028. All were granted early spots during the last cycle.

Bottom line: there is a long way to go, folks.

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More on the 2028 presidential primary calendar here and here.

"In Boost to FITN Fortunes, NH’s O’Brien Tapped to Head RNC Rules Committee"

Michael Graham at the NH Journal has the story on the new RNC Rules Committee chair:

"Former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien has been elected chairman of the Republican National Committee’s powerful Rules Committee, placing the veteran GOP leader at the center of the party’s preparations for the next presidential election.

"O’Brien, who serves as New Hampshire’s Republican National Committeeman, was chosen by his colleagues to lead the panel through the end of the next Republican National Convention. The Rules Committee oversees the party’s governing framework, including convention procedures, delegate selection, and the presidential nomination calendar..."

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Noteworthy: While there have been no rumblings of any imminent changes to the beginning of the 2028 presidential primary calendar on the Republican side, this is a feather in the cap for Republicans in the Granite state. New Hampshire probably is -- and was -- not going anywhere, but holding the gavel in Rules Committee meetings provides some additional insulation for the first-in-the-nation primary that was not there before.

"DNC chair says Democrats will start process of setting 2028 primary calendar this month"

Sarah Fortinsky at the The Hill summarizes DNC Chair Ken Martin's comments on the 2028 Democratic primary calendar:

"Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin said on Sunday that the party will begin deliberating the 2028 primary calendar later this month at a meeting in Minneapolis.

"'We’re going to start that conversation actually this month in August at our DNC meeting in Minneapolis,' Martin said in an interview on NewsNation’s 'The Hill Sunday,' when host Chris Stirewalt asked about the primary calendar in the next president election.

"'The Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is newly composed, will start this conversation by putting forward the rules and procedures, and start to really figure out how we’re going to engage in this,' he continued.

"Martin said the process will play out over the next year, and he expects to have a calendar set by the end of next year."

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Noteworthy: The rough timeline here suggests that the DNC will carry over some elements of the process from the 2024 cycle. That the final calendar decisions at the national party level did not come down until not only after the 2022 midterms but in December of that year was a break from the protocol the party had utilized in most previous post-reform cycles. Usually, those early window calendar slots were settled on in the late summer/early fall of the midterm year alongside the formal final adoption of the entire rules package for the upcoming presidential nomination process. 

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More from FHQ Plus (subscription):

DNC Chair Martin lays out early state checklist for 2028