Candidates are making pilgrimages to the Granite State, the DNC is weighing whether to respect the tradition, and Concord is debating whether the state’s famous retail politics can survive an age of political violence.
By Granite State Report
Concord, NH – The 2028 New Hampshire presidential primary is still nearly two years away, and it is already underway. Pete Buttigieg will speak at Dartmouth on February 20. Gavin Newsom is bringing his book tour to the Music Hall in Portsmouth on March 5. Andy Beshear will fundraise with local Democrats in early March. Before them came JB Pritzker, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Ruben Gallego, and a growing roster of Democratic hopefuls making the familiar pilgrimage to VFW halls and house parties across the Granite State.
The visits tell a story that Granite Staters know by heart: no matter what the national parties decide, New Hampshire remains the place where presidential ambitions are tested face to face, one handshake at a time. But the 2028 cycle is arriving under unusual conditions. The Democratic National Committee has not yet decided whether to recognize New Hampshire’s primary. A bipartisan security task force proposal is forcing the state to confront whether its cherished tradition of intimate, accessible campaigning can survive an era of political violence. And the state itself is navigating a moment of profound national tension that makes the stakes of the first-in-the-nation primary feel higher than they have in a generation.
First in the Nation—Whether the DNC Likes It or Not
New Hampshire has held the first presidential primary since 1920. A state law passed in 1975 mandates that the secretary of state schedule the primary at least one week before any similar contest in the country. That law is not negotiable, and state officials have been blunt about it: New Hampshire will go first regardless of what the national parties decide.
But the question of recognition matters enormously. In 2024, then-President Biden pushed the DNC to make South Carolina the first sanctioned Democratic primary, sidelining New Hampshire. The state held its primary anyway, but the DNC declared the results meaningless—a punishment that stung even as New Hampshire voters turned out in force. The episode left scars. For 2028, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is considering applications from a dozen states vying for early-window spots. New Hampshire submitted its case by the January 16 deadline and has reason for cautious optimism. The committee awarded New Hampshire a second seat last year after stripping Iowa of its only seat—a shift in influence that party insiders read as a signal. Nevada, Iowa, and South Carolina are all competing for the top positions.
State Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley has said he is confident the DNC will restore New Hampshire’s position. But he has also been candid that if the national party declines, the state law takes over. The secretary of state can simply monitor other states’ legislative calendars and move New Hampshire’s primary to one week before the earliest competitor—a blunt instrument, but an effective one.
On the Republican side, the picture is calmer. Former state GOP Chairman Chris Ager, who sits on a committee promoting the primary, has said he is confident New Hampshire will remain first on the Republican calendar, noting that there has been no movement within the RNC to change the process.
The Shadow Campaign Is Already Running
The surest sign that New Hampshire still matters is who keeps showing up. The parade of potential Democratic candidates visiting the Granite State in early 2026 reads like a who’s-who of the party’s post-Trump generation. Buttigieg, who finished a close second in the 2020 New Hampshire primary, is returning to the state where he first became a serious national figure. Beshear, who has won three consecutive statewide elections in a state Trump carried by 30 points, has been making the case that he is the most electable Democrat in the field. Booker told Fox News during a November visit that he was thinking about it. Newsom’s Portsmouth stop may be framed as a book event, but nobody in New Hampshire politics is fooled by the distinction.
The early visits matter because New Hampshire rewards them. The state’s primary has historically been the province of lesser-known candidates who build support one conversation at a time—Jimmy Carter in 1976, Gary Hart in 1984, John McCain in 2000, Barack Obama in 2008. It is the one contest in American politics where a candidate with no national profile, no Super PAC, and no Secret Service detail can shake hands at a diner in Manchester and change the trajectory of a presidential race. That tradition is what makes New Hampshire’s primary valuable. It is also what makes it vulnerable.
The Security Question Nobody Wanted to Ask
In early February, House Deputy Majority Leader Joe Sweeney introduced a bipartisan bill to create a state task force that would develop safety guidance for presidential campaign events. The bill, co-sponsored by House Democratic Leader Alexis Simpson, would bring together top state safety officials, local police, higher education leaders, and representatives of both parties to craft recommendations that protect free speech and public safety.
Sweeney was direct about what prompted the legislation: he had been hearing from family and friends—people who are not political—who questioned whether they would feel safe attending campaign events in the current climate. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump during the 2024 cycle, combined with a broader atmosphere of political threat and intimidation, has changed the calculus for ordinary citizens considering whether to show up at a town hall.
The proposal received a chilly reception from New Hampshire State Police Captain Matthew Amatucci, who testified that existing partnerships among local, state, and federal agencies—with the Secret Service taking the lead for protected persons—already provide adequate security. He warned that creating a formal task force could duplicate efforts, impose unfunded mandates on local departments, and produce published guidance that might actually help bad actors by revealing security tactics. Under questioning, Amatucci acknowledged that the guidance might benefit lesser-known candidates who do not qualify for Secret Service protection—precisely the kind of longshot contenders that the New Hampshire primary is designed to elevate.
The Union Leader’s editorial board came down against the task force, arguing that existing law enforcement cooperation is sufficient and that a formal body risks bureaucratizing something that works best when it stays informal. NHPR readers were similarly skeptical, with many arguing that candidates who want more security should pay for it themselves.
But the debate itself reveals a deeper tension. New Hampshire’s primary derives its power from accessibility: the idea that a voter can walk up to a future president in a school gymnasium and ask a question. If that accessibility becomes a liability—if candidates retreat behind barriers, if voters stay home out of fear, if town halls become controlled events with metal detectors and credential checks—then the primary loses the very quality that makes it worth fighting for.
What 2028 Will Test
The 2028 cycle will test New Hampshire’s primary tradition on multiple fronts simultaneously. The DNC’s calendar decision, expected later this year, will determine whether the state’s Democratic primary carries delegate weight or is once again an act of political defiance. The security debate will shape how candidates campaign here and how voters experience those campaigns. And the sheer size of the expected Democratic field—potentially the largest since 2020—will test whether the retail model can still function as a genuine sorting mechanism or whether it has become a nostalgic performance.
For New Hampshire, the stakes are existential. The first-in-the-nation primary is not just a political tradition; it is a civic identity, an economic engine, and a source of outsize national influence for a state with four electoral votes. It brings hundreds of millions of dollars in media attention, fills hotels from Portsmouth to the North Country, and gives ordinary Granite Staters a role in presidential politics that citizens of larger states can only dream of.
Jim Splaine, the Portsmouth Democrat and former state legislator who helped write the 1975 law, celebrated its 50th anniversary at the State House last May. The law was designed to protect something Splaine and his generation believed was worth protecting: the idea that democracy works best when it starts small, when candidates earn support one voter at a time, and when the first judgment belongs to a state where showing up still counts for something.
Nearly two years before the first ballot is cast, the candidates are already arriving. The question is not whether New Hampshire will hold its primary. It will. The question is whether the primary New Hampshire holds will still be the one that matters.
Sources: NHPR, Union Leader, Boston Globe, NBC Boston, Portsmouth Herald, Yahoo News/Seacoast Media Group, New Hampshire Bulletin, WMUR, Wikipedia (2028 election), and Independent Voter News.
