black voter

MINNEAPOLIS — The Democratic National Committee is seriously considering scrambling the party’s 2028 presidential primary calendar. And South Carolina — the state that hosted the Democrats’ first-in-the-nation contest in 2024 — is far from a lock to go first.

That’s according to several members of the DNC’s new leadership team, including Chair Ken Martin.

“The idea that we’re just going to sort of rubber-stamp the same old calendar, that is not likely what’s going to happen,” Martin told the Associated Press.

Followed closely by political insiders, the order of each party’s state-by-state presidential nomination process has major implications for the economies of the states involved, the candidates and ultimately the nation.

The changes may come even as the next presidential primary has already begun — informally, at least. Half a dozen presidential prospects have already begun to make early pilgrimages to the states that topped the calendar last time — South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa chief among them.

The would-be candidates may need to amend their travel schedules.

Why the ‘early states’ may change

Although Democrats and Republicans have the power to change their calendar every four years, the same batch of states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — have dominated the process for decades.

Democrats, led by then-President Biden, gave South Carolina the opening position in 2024 instead of Iowa and New Hampshire in a nod to the party’s loyal base of Black voters, while adding Georgia and Michigan to the so-called early window.

But now a new group of party officials is governing the calendar process. Martin earlier in the year replaced former Chair Jaime Harrison, a South Carolina native. And 32 of the 49 members of the powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee, which will vote on any new calendar before it moves to the party’s full body, are new to the committee.

“We’re not as tied to the way we’ve always done things,” said DNC Vice Chair Shasti Conrad, who is a newcomer to Rules and Bylaws and also chairs the Washington state Democratic Party.

“A priority for me is that there are large communities of color in those states,” Conrad said.

Which states could replace South Carolina?

As Democratic officials gathered in Martin’s home state of Minnesota for their summer meeting this week, there were several private conversations about whether South Carolina, which is a reliably Republican state, should be replaced by another Southern state that is considered a swing state in the general election. North Carolina and Georgia are considered the early favorites if a change is made.

Martin himself said South Carolina could lose its top spot. But he expressed confidence that a state with a large Black population, if not South Carolina, would be featured prominently in the Democrats’ next nomination process.

“Clearly, the most reliable constituency of the Democratic Party are Black voters, and they will have a prominent role in the selection of our nominee,” Martin said. “And whether it’s South Carolina or some other states, rest assured that making sure that there’s a state in the mix that actually will battle test your nominee with African American voters is really critical to making sure we can win in November.”

States are lobbying for spots

Leaders from several states hoping to claim an opening slot began making their cases in private conversations with influential DNC members this week. Others have begun to speak out publicly. Officials from Nevada and Iowa have advocated for themselves more publicly in recent days.

Nevada Democrats released a memo on Wednesday arguing that Nevada should win the top spot in 2028 if the party “is serious about winning back working-class voters.”

“Given the challenges we are facing to rebuild our party brand, we cannot afford to have overwhelmingly college-educated, white, or less competitive states kick off the process of selecting our party’s nominee,” wrote Hilary Barrett, executive director of the Nevada Democratic Party.

Harrison said he would “fight like hell” to ensure South Carolina stays first in 2028.

“If you take a look at every presidential primary we’ve had over the last 20 years, South Carolina has been a better predictor than Nevada, Iowa or New Hampshire in terms of picking” the eventual nominee, Harrison said. “And that is because our people are not ideological. … No, a majority of Black voters are not conservative or progressive. They’re pragmatic.”

Harrison noted that while South Carolina went first in 2024, there was no real competition for Biden.

“I think it’s a big slap in the face if you say that you don’t even give South Carolina an opportunity to be first in the nation at least one time in an open primary process, right?” he said.

What’s next in the process

The debate won’t be decided this year.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee will host a meeting in September to formalize how the calendar selection process will play out. Martin said a series of meetings would follow throughout the fall, winter and into next spring.

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, one of the few veterans who retained their seat on Rules and Bylaws, noted that New Hampshire is bound by state law to host the nation’s opening presidential primary election regardless of the DNC’s wishes.

New Hampshire, of course, bucked the DNC’s 2024 calendar. Iowa in recent days has threatened to go rogue as well in 2028 if it’s skipped over again.

“Everyone has the opportunity to make their case,” Buckley said. “New states, interesting states, will make their case. And I have faith that the process will be fair.”

Peoples writes for the Associated Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Randolph Bracy and LaVon Bracy Davis are taking sibling rivalry to a new level as the brother and sister run against each other in a race for a Florida state Senate seat on Tuesday.

Not only that, one of their opponents for the Democratic nomination in the district representing parts of metro Orlando is Alan Grayson, a combative former Democratic U.S. congressman who drew national attention in 2009 when he said in a House floor speech that the Republican health care plan was to “die quickly.”

The headline-grabbing candidates are running in the special primary election for the seat that had been held by Geraldine Thompson, a trailblazing veteran lawmaker who died earlier this year following complications from knee-replacement surgery. A fourth candidate also is running in the Democratic primary — personal injury attorney Coretta Anthony-Smith.

The winner will face Republican Willie Montague in September for the general election in the Democratic-dominant district. Black voters make up more than half registered Democrats in the district.

Florida Sen. Randolph Bracy, rear, makes a point during a Senate Committee on Reapportionment hearing in a legislative session, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, in Tallahassee, Fla.

(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)

Both siblings have experience in the state legislature. Bracy Davis was a state representative, and Bracy was a former state senator. Adding to the family dynamics was the fact that the siblings’ mother, civil rights activist Lavon Wright Bracy, was the maid of honor at Thompson’s wedding and was one of her oldest friends. She has endorsed her daughter over her son.

The siblings’ family has been active in Orlando’s civic life for decades. Their father, Randolph Bracy Jr., was a local NAACP president, a founder of a Baptist church in Orlando and director of the religion department at Bethune-Cookman University.

It wasn’t the first time the family has been caught up in competing endorsements. When Bracy and Thompson ran against each other for the Democratic primary in a state senate race last year, Bracy Davis endorsed Thompson over her brother. Campaign fliers sent out recently by a Republican political operative start with “Bracy Yourself!”

Bracy, 48, who one time played professional basketball in Turkey, told the Orlando Sentinel that it was “disappointing and hurtful” for his sister to run after he had announced his bid. But Bracy Davis, 45, an attorney by training, said she was running for the people in state senate District 15, not against any of the other candidates. She said that she intended to continue Thompson’s legacy of pushing for voters’ rights and increasing pay for public schoolteachers. Thompson’s family has endorsed Bracy Davis.

Grayson was elected to Congress in 2008 and voted out in 2010. Voters sent him back to Congress in 2012, but he gave up his seat for an unsuccessful 2016 Senate run.

ATLANTA — U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi on Monday instructed the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a sweeping election overhaul that Georgia Republican lawmakers passed in the wake of President Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2021 under former President Biden, alleged that the Georgia law was intended to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot. Bondi said the Biden administration was pushing “false claims of suppression.”

“Georgians deserve secure elections, not fabricated claims of false voter suppression meant to divide us,” she said.

The law was part of a trend of Republican-backed measures that tightened rules around voting, passed in the months after Trump lost his reelection bid to Biden, claiming without evidence that voter fraud cost him victory. The fallout was swift after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law in March 2021, with the CEOs of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola voicing criticism and Major League Baseball’s commissioner deciding to move that year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta’s Truist Park.

Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans who drew Trump’s ire when they refused to help overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, strongly denounced the Justice Department lawsuit when it was filed. Raffensperger on Monday called Bondi’s announcement “a significant win for Georgia voters.”

“Our commitment has always been to ensure fair and secure elections for every Georgian, despite losing an All-Star game and the left’s boycott of Georgia as a result of commonsense election law,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

Known as SB 202, the law added a voter ID requirement for mail ballots, shortened the time period for requesting a mailed ballot and resulted in fewer ballot drop boxes available in populous metro Atlanta counties that lean Democratic and have a significant Black population. The law also banned the distribution of food and water by various groups and organizations to voters standing in line to cast a ballot.

In announcing the dismissal of the lawsuit, Bondi said Black voter turnout in Georgia “actually increased” after the law was passed. A December analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that while the number of ballots cast by Black voters increased from 2020 to 2024, Black turnout actually declined by 0.6% because the increase in the number of ballots cast by Black voters did not keep up with population increases.

“Understanding whether, or to what extent, these declines are due to restrictive voting policies such as Georgia’s S.B. 202, justifiable feelings that the government is not working for them, or myriad other factors will be of signal importance,” the analysis says.

In addition to the Justice Department lawsuit, about a half-dozen other suits were filed by civil rights and election integrity groups raising claims based on the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.