Are New Hampshire Democrats Blackmailing Biden?
A write-in campaign that claims to be supporting the President has a better chance of undermining his re-election--and they must know it
It’s the countdown to the New Year, friends, and most print media are filling up more and more of their pages with listicles. Not me (at least, so far not me.) So if you know someone who loves a good, in-depth political story, podcasts, and the occasional mixed-media piece, please:
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Four years ago, I was champing at the bit to participate in a legendary American political tradition: canvassing in New Hampshire for Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential campaign. For several weekends in a row, under the direction of a twenty-something political science major from Ohio, several dozen of us drove or bussed across the Massachusetts border to stomp around in the snow and ice, armed with lists of voters predisposed to be friendly to us, door hangers, and as many layers as possible. You can read about it here if you are nostalgic: it was the second post I ever published at Substack.
I also learned that it is a very weird state. It’s the only place I have ever canvassed where someone set a dog on me and where someone has called my candidate a Communist (in both cases, these were registered Democrats.) Needless to say, my hopes began to dim that Warren would succeed there.
But even if Warren had won New Hampshire, which we thought she had a shot at because of the state’s proximity to Massachusetts, it wouldn’t have meant much. Since 1988, the New Hampshire primary has been as much a ritual for Democrats as a meaningful indicator as to who will be either a party nominee or the president. And it’s an expensive ritual. Candidates pour money into the state, and it is more or less pointless. Since 1992, here are some candidates who have won New Hampshire: Paul Tsongas (1992), Hillary Clinton (2008), and Bernie Sanders (2016).
What do they all have in common? They lost the nomination, that’s what. Clinton became the nominee eight years later, but only after losing to Sanders in New Hampshire. Joe Biden, who became president in 2000, also lost New Hampshire—not just to Bernie Sanders, but to (in order) Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren. That is some serious losing: in fact, I wondered at the time whether Biden was even bothering to compete in the Granite State. I met canvassers from the other campaigns constantly, but only once ran into a Biden staffer, and that was in a coffee shop. They didn’t even have signs up.
Perhaps because New Hampshire is a highly libertarian and very white state (according to a 2022 census, 92.6% white, of which only 3.8% are white Hispanic) the primary better predicts who the GOP standard bearer will be. Since 1976, the only Republican nominee to lose the New Hampshire primary has been George W. Bush in 2000 (to John McCain), and Donald J. Trump is on track to win the state’s Republican primary for the third time in a row.
So while Donald Trump will romp to victory in the Granite State, Biden, the incumbent president, will not even be on the ballot in New Hampshire, the first time this has happened in a century. The reason for this is that the Democratic National Committee wanted South Carolina, which boosted Biden into the nomination in 2020 and is a far more diverse state, to be the first primary in 2024. As his campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, wrote to the state party chair: “While the president wishes to participate in the Primary, he is obligated as a Democratic candidate for President to comply with the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2024 Democratic National Convention promulgated by the Democratic National Committee."
This has pissed New Hampshire Democrats off. They refused to reschedule the primary. The 2024 New Hampshire Democratic primary ballot now lists 22 candidates, none of whom are Joe Biden, and only two of whom you would have any hope of recognizing: Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips and wellness guru Marianne Williamson. Among the 20 others is the gender nonbinary “love candidate” Paperboy Love Prince, last seen running in the 2021 Democratic primary for mayor of his native New York City; they have also run for Congress, and have a truly dazzling webpage. There is President R19 Boddie, who was told to run by God. And there is Paul V. LaCava, a 71-year-old professor at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, MA.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
There is an added twist, however, which is slightly more ominous. An organization has sprung up called Biden that is urging New Hampshire Democrats to—you guessed it—vote for Joe Biden as a write-in candidate. Describing itself as “a grassroots effort led by dozens of citizens across the state who are committed to writing in Joe Biden in New Hampshire’s 2024 Presidential Primary on January 23rd,” the group (which are actually dozens of members of the New Hampshire Democratic party) is exhorting Democrats and independent voters to support Biden by writing him in on a space at the bottom of the ballot.
Who are these people? It’s hard to know. The organization is funded by a Super PAC called Granite State Write-In, whose treasurer is a man named Larry Drake, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Drake’s LinkedIn profile lists him as an Independent Political Organization Professional, and his most recent political work as chair of the Rockingham County Democratic Committee. Drake is no longer on the website, but he was most recently re-elected to that position in 2021, so he is not a fringe figure in the party. Rockingham County, where Portsmouth is, does not resemble most of New Hampshire, which is a poor and rural state.Instead, it’s the fourth wealthiest county in New England, and part of the greater Boston area. In other words, it’s a place where people who make gobs of money in Boston establish residence so they don’t have to pay Massachusetts state taxes.
New Hampshire has no state taxes. But I digress.
Four days ago, Write-In Biden hit the local news: Stephen Porter of the Boston Globe did a story about the organization’s campaign launch, and the committee’s effort to recruit Massachusetts volunteers who would canvass New Hampshire voters for Biden. Weirdly, since Biden would be the 23rd candidate, the Super PAC was also registered with the FEC on October 23, 2023. There are no fundraising or spending reports as of yet, and Porter was unable to reach members of the committee. I gave it a shot too, calling the number listed for Larry Drake on the FEC filing form: someone named Breianna, with a Mississippi telephone number, answered and said she was only in charge of compliance, and that someone from the campaign would call me back.
I’m still waiting.
But as far as I can tell, “Write-In Biden” isn’t really about Joe Biden: it’s about the New Hampshire Democratic party being unwilling to cede the first primary in the nation to South Carolina. Representative Annie Kuster (D, NH-2) said as much in a recent interview. “We are resurrecting our civic tradition,” she told a reporter from WMUR TV, a local New Hampshire station. “In 2028, I want us to be the first presidential primary in the nation.” As Kuster explained, a resounding write-in campaign for the president (“Biden is very easy to spell,” she noted) would bring major 2028 Democratic candidates back to the state.
In truth, the whole thing feels like a weird kind of revenge campaign waged by the Democratic party of one of the smallest, most politically insignificant states in the nation. Why? Because Biden, who wanted to elevate the Black voters who won him the last election, did something that not only thanked them for that, but rejiggered the primary system so that Democrats would not have to spend millions of campaign dollars on a primary that doesn’t really matter.
Here’s my concern. If these organizers in New Hampshire are determined to put Biden on the ballot anyway, they put his presidency at risk. As a sitting president, if Biden is on the ballot against his will and loses to one of the 22 clowns, charlatans, and nobodies who defied the party rules, it becomes yet another uncertainty about whether Democrats in general will turn out for Biden in November 2024. In addition, if this is a blackmail campaign to put this small state of white voters back in charge in 2028 (and that’s what it looks like), it signals the possibility of fractures in the party yet to come: urban versus rural voters; traditional Northeastern Democratic party power brokers versus a growing Democratic revival in the American South; and most importantly, white versus Black voters.
The New Hampshire primary is on January 23, and the state’s Democratic party has managed to make a messy situation even more volatile. That is, unless Biden cuts a deal for 2028 and shuts these people down.
What I’m doing when you aren’t looking:
I watched a new documentary, Between Life and Death: Terry Schiavo’s Story (MSNBC: Nick Capote, 2023) about a 2005 right to die case that split a family and accelerated the political importance of the Christian right. Schiavo, some of you may recall, collapsed from a heart attack in her St. Petersburg home when she was only 26, was revived, and lived on in a persistent vegetative state. After ten years of no improvement, Terri’s husband Michael decided to withdraw treatment, but Terri’s birth family, who believed that she was responding to them and that her life was meaningful, fought the decision, enlisting the Christian right in their cause. It’s a riveting story. Between Life and Death debuted on December 3, 2023: you can now stream it on Peacock.
And here’s a bonus for the holidays: through December 26, all annual subscriptions—for yourself or others—include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.)
Short takes:
At Pro Publica, a nonprofit investigative reporting site that has been doing great work on right wing financials, Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Alex Mierjeski and Brett Murphy dig into the context for the relationships Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made with wealthy, far-right donors. “In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt,” the reporters write, and hinted to an audience of conservatives and at least one congressional Republican that he and perhaps others would resign, absent the opportunity to become wealthy. For the first decade of his tenure, Thomas and his wife Ginny lived well above their means, and “around 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill, according to interviews with prominent attorneys, former members of Congress and Thomas’ friends.” And not coincidentally, as Ché Guevara sings in the musical Evita, the money came rolling in from every side. (December 18, 2023)
If you read this story by Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter (do they have any idea how awkward that is to write), she has the exact same analysis of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s Republican primary strategy as I did some three weeks ago (takes bow.) But can New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu’s recent endorsement help upend the race. Nope, because there just aren’t enough anti-Trump voters in the world. “According to the UNH/CNN poll, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy combine for 17% of the vote,” Walter explains. “If Haley could capture those voters and the 14% who are supporting former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, she’d be at 51% to Trump’s 42%. But, half of DeSantis’ voters and 40% of Ramaswamy’s voters say their second choice would be Trump, not Haley. That would bump Trump’s share of the vote closer to 48-50%, still leaving Haley in a very distant second place.” (December 15, 2023)
A head or two needs to roll at Northeastern University’s IT department. For the second year in a row, the school has sent out acceptance letters to students who were rejected. I mean, come on! How hard can this be? As Kaitlin McKinley Becker and Asher Klein report at NBC News 10 Boston, 48 potential MA students who are still under review were told they were accepted. “Last October,” the team reports, “the university explained that a technical error caused acceptance letters to be issued to more than 200 current applicants for the school of law, and to almost 4,000 people who applied a year earlier.” (December 16, 2023)
This is an interesting and plausible read. My own read had been that NH Democrats are so high on their own supply that they really might not see the downside of what they’re doing. It’s a state where like one out of every 3.000 voting age people is in the state legislature and every four years the entire political world comes to kiss their asses. It breeds a special kind of thinking. But also those two reads of their motives aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.