Biden, New Hampshire Dems make peace

GOFFSTOWN, New Hampshire — New Hampshire Democrats are putting party over petty.

When President Joe Biden touched down in New Hampshire on Monday for the first time in nearly two years, many of the state’s most prominent Democrats — including those who publicly berated the president for spurning their state’s storied primary — appeared by his side. And even the few elected Democrats here who backed Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) over Biden are starting to come around.

“It’s not about personalities and politics, it’s about the future of our country,” former state House Speaker Steve Shurtleff said in an interview.

But after a prolonged feud between Biden and New Hampshire over the primary calendar, Shurtleff warned, “there are still hard feelings among some people, even those that wrote in the president’s name [in the primary], about the way New Hampshire was treated.”

Some of that lingering ill will may be quickly resolved if the Democratic National Committee agrees to seat the delegates Biden — and for that matter, Phillips — won in New Hampshire’s primary.

Biden told supporters at a private campaign event on Monday that while he wouldn’t get ahead of the DNC’s process, he expects that New Hampshire’s delegates will count, according to two people familiar with his remarks and granted anonymity to speak freely.

The DNC passed rules heading into this election cycle that could cost New Hampshire half its delegates for breaking with the party’s nominating calendar. And when the state Democratic Party moved ahead with delegate-selection caucuses ahead of the January primary, the DNC derided the contest as “meaningless.” But the committee has backtracked on sanctions before — easing penalties on Florida and Michigan in 2008 after they broke party rules and held their primaries too early.

The decision ultimately rests with the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is set to consider the matter at a meeting later this month. Committee co-chair Jim Roosevelt said that there is an openness among members about finding a way to seat the delegates, particularly after Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key Biden ally, publicly called for the DNC to do so.

And after listening to Biden on Monday, Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.), said she’s “confident that we will get this resolved with the DNC.”

Even as Biden skipped putting his name on the state’s primary ballot over the calendar spat, his team promised the president would campaign in New Hampshire ahead of the general election — a message he reiterated to the state’s congressional delegation in a post-primary meeting at the White House. Biden’s campaign has already stationed eight staffers in the Granite State.

On Monday, Sen. Maggie Hassan — who, along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, once pointedly skipped a White House ball to spite the president for stripping New Hampshire of its favored place in the presidential nominating process — introduced him at an event about lowering health care costs. Hassan, Kuster, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley and architects of the successful primary write-in campaign on Biden’s behalf greeted the president at a campaign office in a Manchester strip mall shortly after.

In return, Biden called Hassen and Shaheen “two of the best senators” he’s “ever served with” at the top of his speech in Goffstown. He described Shaheen, who was not in attendance, as a “dear, dear friend, and a great ally.” And Biden singled out her husband, who was among those who greeted him at the Manchester airport, for an ovation — even after Bill Shaheen hosted Phillips at his law firm last fall and accompanied him at a campaign stop in Dover.

Later, at the private campaign event packed with Democrats who ran the grassroots write-in campaign on his behalf, Biden expressed gratitude for their support and astonishment at the success of their effort. He also addressed concerns about his age and poor approval ratings and took questions from supporters.

Kathy Sullivan, a longtime New Hampshire Democratic operative who helmed a super PAC that supported the write-in effort, said Biden notching nearly 64 percent of the vote in the primary showed that “as disappointed as we were at the attempt to change the calendar … he’s our choice for president.”

While Biden doesn’t need New Hampshire’s delegates to lock up his party’s nomination for the second consecutive cycle, he will need them in the general election — particularly if it's a close race. Biden beat Donald Trump in New Hampshire by 8 percentage points in 2020. And New Hampshire voters have picked the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 2004.

“Although we only have four electoral votes, they’re crucial. We like to remind people that if Al Gore had won New Hampshire, he wouldn’t have needed Florida and he would have been president,” Kuster said.

“We’re excited that [Biden] is here,” she said. “He’s always welcome in New Hampshire.”