The NPR Politics Podcast - If Dems Hold A Primary In N.H., And Biden's Not On Ballots, What Could Happen?

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

The incumbent president may not appear on New Hampshire's Democratic primary ballots this winter. After the party moved its first 2024 nominating contest to South Carolina, the state said it would still hold its primary beforehand regardless. This, in turn, sets up a possible scenario where if Biden refuses to campaign in the state, and leaves his name off the ballot — it allows a fringe candidate like anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to win.This episode: political reporter Deepa Shivaram, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and New Hampshire Public Radio senior political reporter and editor Josh Rogers.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Martha from Austin, Texas. I am currently in Nelson, British Columbia, where I have just finished watching my nine-year-old gymnastic niece's end-of-year show at Glacier Gymnastics. She and all the girls were so great. This podcast was recorded at 1121 AM on Wednesday, July 12, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Enjoy the show. Congratulations. Ooh, Austin, great spot for tacos. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today we're joined by Josh Rogers of New Hampshire Public Radio. Hey, Josh. Hello. So 2024 presidential candidates are ramping up their campaigning in New Hampshire,

which has long been the first presidential primary in the country. Hashtag first in the nation. We all know this. But things are a little bit wonky this year. New Hampshire Democrats are holding an unsanctioned primary. Josh, what is an unsanctioned primary? What's going on here? Well, as you know, the DNC, with the backing of President Biden, decided to rejigger the primary schedule, having South Carolina vote first. New Hampshire has a state law, however, which says essentially it must go first seven days before any similar contest. That would traditionally mean Iowa could go first since it's a caucus. Election officials here and leaders in both political parties said New Hampshire will be going first. And New Hampshire primary has always been dependent on who chooses to show up and whether President Biden chooses to put his name on the ballot here is something that has Democrats agitated because like right now, it doesn't seem like he probably will.

Does that mean no delegates get awarded to whoever wins by the Democrats? It could mean that. You know, New Hampshire has been subject to such threats before, and it hasn't moved them. You know, in New Hampshire, the point of view from the politicians is we're going to have our primary, and party leaders will tell you they're not terribly concerned about the delegates. And, you know, the candidates are going to have to make their own calculations as to whether they want to participate or not. So right now, what does this mean for how much Biden is going to campaign in the state? We don't know. I mean, there is a former party chair wants to have a essentially a write in campaign to make sure that Biden is at least represented on the ballot because she fears.

And this is Kathy Sullivan, she was a DNC member and a longtime party chair, is that in the absence of Biden being on the ballot, that that will essentially guarantee that RFK Jr. or Marianne Williamson would win. And in her estimation, in the estimation of a lot of establishment Democrats, that would be bad for all, you know, parochially bad for New Hampshire. You know, there is really a desire to ensure from these people's point of view that New Hampshire always be first. The state law will determine it. And they don't want the New Hampshire primary to become essentially a sideshow. So they would like if, in fact, things go to pass the way they seem to be, that Joe Biden would carry the New Hampshire

primary. At least the establishment Democrats want that. Well, what's so interesting about Kathy Sullivan's request or really cry for help that people should at least write in Biden is going to be this big battle over the perception of what is the New Hampshire primary. In other words, if Marianne Williamson or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wins, is that a rebuke to Biden or is that just phony baloney since Biden wasn't even on the ballot? This is going to be symbolic, but symbols are important. Is it going to be a symbol of how weak Biden is or if he crushes them with a write-in campaign, how strong he is? We don't know. Right. And earlier, Josh, you mentioned Robert F. Kennedy. I want to get into that a little bit just to catch up, he's an environmental lawyer, rampant conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, but he's running against Biden in the Democratic nomination, like we said.

What is his message been and how are voters responding to him in the state? Well, he's been here, I think, three times early on. I mean, he gave a speech sort of introducing himself to voters. And I covered that speech. That was one where the audience included certainly people drawn to his environmental work, people who are skeptical of vaccines and, you know, sort of anti-establishment, sort of almost like a raw milk, sort of hippie element was there. There are some sort of libertarians who are intrigued by him. But the other two events where I've covered him, I mean, the audience is increasingly not one populated by anybody you'd consider Democratic Party regulars. I covered him when he campaigned at a libertarian camp out known as Porkfest run by the Free State Project. And, you know, he went over pretty big there. But again, these are not traditional Democratic voters.

New Hampshire does have an open primary, and that is something that will be interesting to watch, really, in both Democrat and Republican Party, where independent voters choose to participate. There are some Republicans who would say a lot of them are going to vote in the Republican primary, which could skew the electorate. As far as, you know, what this means for RFK, I mean, he doesn't seem to be running an on-the-ground campaign here, and the sorts of Democrats the Kennedy name might attract are not going to be attracted to him the more they listen to him. So it's going to be interesting to see what he's really up to. Is he really seriously running with hopes of winning an election or simply to, you know, sort of further his sort of brand culturally? I don't know at this point. Isn't it just a big fat target for

Republicans who want to cause Biden as much problems as they can. And they'll encourage people to vote in the Democratic primary for RFK, because especially if it looks like Trump is way ahead and that primary isn't as close, they're going to encourage independents and libertarians and Republicans to go and vote in the Democratic primary just to hurt Biden. I think that could happen. I mean, how incorrigible the population may be to do that, I think is an open question. I mean, there will be lots of Democrat-leaning independents who will vote in the Republican primary strategically.

I mean, a certain amount of that always happens. And, you know, if you look at somebody running the Republican primary, like Chris Christie, who's running explicitly as an anti-Trump candidate. You know, I've talked to Democrats who say I may vote for him in the primary. There are others who obviously want Trump to be the nominee since Biden beat him. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's really hard to say how organizable, you know, the population who might vote for Kennedy could be. And, of course, you said you don't know how incorrigible his supporters are. I was thinking you said incorrigible because New Hampshire is incorrigible and New Hampshire

is pissed off that the Democratic Party has taken away their status as first in the nation. And now they have a way to show it. They have a way to cast a protest vote, go into the Democratic primary and vote against Joe Biden for Marianne Williamson or RFK. What do you think of that? For some, yes, that may happen. But it's also true that at least the real sort of institutional defenders of the primary, they still think that New Hampshire, you know, has a reputation for being serious. And they want to show that New Hampshire deserves to be first in the future, regardless of what the DNC may have decided for now and whether voting for RFK or Marianne Williamson would further that. I think they would say it wouldn't.

So there are pushes and pulls for them. I mean, they're certainly angry, but they don't want to do something that would essentially verify the view that plenty of other states have that New Hampshire is a place that has had its turn and shouldn't get it again. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. Josh, on the other side of the aisle here, New Hampshire is still the first primary in the nation. Out of all the GOP candidates in the race so far, which ones seem to be prioritizing the Granite State? And what has their strategy been so far? Well, former President Trump has been here several times.

Chris Christie, who's running explicitly as an anti-Trump candidate, has indicated that New Hampshire is going to be where he does a lot of his campaigning, feels there's an audience for his kind of politics here. There wasn't a huge audience for that the last time he ran. Ron DeSantis is mounting a vast ground game in terms of the super PAC aligned with him. He's got to do something sometime early in order to be viable. Vivek Ramaswamy has certainly tried to make inroads here. But, you know, the polls do indicate here, as they do elsewhere, that former President Trump does have a commanding lead. So, you know, the polls do indicate here, as they do elsewhere, that former President Trump does have a commanding lead. So, you know, New Hampshire is a state that voted for Trump twice in the primary.

And, you know, he's looking pretty solid here and he has been showing up. Mara, Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor, is kind of putting all of his eggs in one basket here with this state. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Well, I think there's really nothing else that he can do. He's polling in the low single digits and his whole candidacy has been styled as a kind of heat-seeking missile. He's not necessarily in it to win it. He's in it to stop Donald Trump. And he considers himself the only Republican in the race who's tough enough and brave enough to go after Trump directly. In order to do that, in order to go after Trump, he has to get on the debate stage.

So he has to win delegates. He has to poll better than he is. And focusing on New Hampshire makes sense because there's really no other strategy open to him. Well, he did the same thing the last time he ran. And his standout moment in that candidacy was essentially taking down Marco Rubio on the debate stage the day before the New Hampshire primary. It may have damaged Chris Christie as much as it did Rubio. Christie

immediately dropped out of the race after New Hampshire. You know, we'll see. He rolled out his campaigner. He launched it here. It was a crowd stocked with people from New Jersey and, you know, kind of anti-Trump Republicans and New Hampshire independents. If you go to other campaign events of other candidates and you ask voters there, who are you looking at? Chris Christie does not come up. So we're still many months away from this primary, which is so wild to me because of how New Hampshire has just been a staple in all of our primary coverage. And this is just, like we said earlier, a little wonky this year. But as we move forward on the Democratic side, on the Republican side, what are you both watching for

as all of these campaigns ramp up? Well, I'm watching for whether the Republicans can solve their collective action problem. They didn't solve it in 2016. As long as Trump runs against a big field of alternatives, they will split the anti-Trump vote and he can win primary after primary with 35% of the vote or 40% of the vote because they are winner-take-all battles. So that means that in order to beat Trump, all the other Republican candidates except for one have to drop out and unify around one alternative. People thought in the beginning it might be Ron DeSantis. That doesn't look like it'll be that way. So if they all stay in, they give Trump a big advantage. And I'm wondering if they'll do that again.

I think Maura makes a good point. You know, I'm just curious to see if, from a parochial point of view, does the DNC end up cutting New Hampshire a little bit of slack? You know, there have been sequential deadlines about, you know, changes to election laws that would even allow New Hampshire to remain in the early voting state window. You know, people here are hoping that there might be a dispensation still coming from the DNC. Hard to see that based on the public comments from national Democrats. I'm also curious to see of what this means on the Democratic side for Biden here. There are lots of Democrats who appreciate his policies, but, you know, do they get out and, you know, mobilize? I mean, this is a time when normally there begin to be

sort of organizational efforts that would go sort of up and down the ticket for Democrats without the impetus of defending Joe Biden and hoping that he wins again. What are the implications for down ticket Democrats? You know, it's hard to see Kennedy and Williamson picking up much more traction than they're getting now. But, you know, the night is relatively young in this thing. And there are going to be factors that shape the Democratic mindset of the voters that, you know, we don't know yet. It's just hard to see how this plays out. And from a New Hampshire point of view, there's a lot of anxiety about what this means institutionally for the New Hampshire

primary. You know, it's always been dependent on candidates showing up and, you know, an incumbent president not showing up at all among people who really want New Hampshire to stay first or potentially reclaim with a sanctioned primary in the future, that has institutional Democrats very anxious. Right. That's a big game changer here. And, you know, I covered the primary in 2020. I was with Elizabeth Warren in New Hampshire quite literally every three days. I'm like really trying to wrap my mind around how crazy this primary is and what a shaky state New Hampshire is in. And Joe Biden, I mean, he didn't exactly thrive in New Hampshire in the primary in 2020. No, he took off before it ended. Yeah, he was looking really

rocky. He shot straight to South Carolina. And, you know, obviously that ended up working out there. And the strategy has clearly pivoted to that. But it is really extraordinary to see how the arc of this has really changed in the past four years. It has. I mean, prior to prior to Biden, no candidate had ever finished worse than second in New Hampshire who ended up getting elected president. And he finished fifth and sort of a flat fifth and managed to get there. So, you know, it's understandable that he has no institutional bias in favor of keeping New Hampshire. It's crazy. All right, Josh Rogers, thank you so much for joining us today. Good to be here. That's all from us today. More tomorrow.

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.