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. But the party 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.

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. He has already stationed at least seven 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, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, Rep. Annie Kuster 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.

Biden previously met with members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation in the Oval Office after their state’s primary to smooth things over.

Kuster recounted that Biden seemed “surprised” at the success of the write-in campaign, which earned the president nearly 64 percent of the vote, and wanted to learn more about what was motivating voters ahead of November.

Biden is “always welcome in New Hampshire,” Kuster said.