DNC chair calls moving up South Carolina primary ‘best indicator’ of eventual nominee

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison defended the move to shift South Carolina’s primary date to be first in the nation, saying the state has long been “the best indicator” of which candidate would ultimately ascend to the top of the party ticket. 

The Democratic National Committee approved in February a new primary calendar for the 2024 presidential campaign cycle that would make South Carolina the first state to hold a Democratic primary in the election cycle. The move has been somewhat controversial, especially among voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, who have long enjoyed their first-in-the-nation primary spots in presidential elections. 

Others, too, have criticized the move as stacking the deck in favor of President Joe Biden, whose strong support from South Carolina Democrats in the 2020 primary election revitalized his campaign, after receiving low support from Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. 

In an interview that aired on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” Harrison expanded on the standard explanation of the primary calendar shift, that the state is more racially diverse. He said not only are voters in South Carolina more representative of the party’s diversity than are those in New Hampshire and Iowa – but, he added, historically, winners of South Carolina’s Democratic primary have served as an early indicator of the party’s eventual nominee.

“South Carolina has been in your early state window now for almost two decades. And if you look at the other early state parties or states during that time – you look at Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada – South Carolina has been the best indicator,” Harrison said when asked why South Carolina was a better option to go first than states like Georgia or North Carolina, which also has a large share of Black voters. 

Harrison expanded on the importance of South Carolina, which is his home state, and pointed to a statistic that showed most African Americans today can trace at least one ancestor from South Carolina, noting approximately 40 percent of enslaved people in America arrived at the Port of Charleston.

“South Carolina has been the best indicator of who is eventually going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, and why is that the case? It is the case because for decades Black voters have been the backbone of the Democratic Party, and what happens in South Carolina has a ripple effect,” he said, later adding, “It really is the glue for a lot of the African American community. It has been the backbone for the Democratic Party. We have saved democracy as we saw in the last election. And South Carolinian voters, particularly the Black voters, will continue to do that as the first in the nation primary.”

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), whose endorsement of Biden in 2020 is largely seen as securing Biden’s victory in the state’s primary, conveyed a similar sentiment in an interview in May 2023. Clyburn said he did not expect the earlier primary date would influence the outcome of the election, but instead the move saves Biden potential embarrassment.

“I don’t think you’re stacking the deck,” Clyburn said in the interview. “I think you’re avoiding embarrassment. And that is what he is attempting to avoid here. And I would expect anybody to do the same.”