DNC Bumps Iowa, Puts South Carolina First

Martin defended the order in an interview, saying a general-election winner "have to be battle-tested in a way that you already have campaigned in front of and for the support of various communities throughout the country."

Democratic strategist Karen Finney, a veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, said candidates "have to show that they can go to the South and talk to Black voters and rural voters, as well as out west, talking ranching and mining issues, to a border state, to union members." She added: "Whoever survives will be battle-tested."

Former DNC chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean, who helped lock in Nevada and South Carolina as early states behind Iowa and New Hampshire, called the new order an improvement: "These states look more like the country," he said, "whereas Iowa and New Hampshire don't."

Iowa Democrats object. As NBC News reported, they argue the calendar leaves no Midwestern state in the early window and hands Republicans — who plan to hold their own 2028 primary in Iowa — an organizing head start in a state with competitive congressional and Senate races.

The Washington Examiner reported growing concern that the schedule disadvantages a progressive candidate. Party figures disagree on that. Boyd Brown, a former DNC member from South Carolina, said primary voters "up north are probably a little different than primary voters in South Carolina," adding, "It's not the woke ideologies that we just can't get away from" elsewhere. Nina Smith, a former Pete Buttigieg adviser now working with progressive causes, countered that "Southern Black voters are more progressive than they're given credit for" on policy while remaining "realists" about what is possible.