DNC Chair Martin lays out early state checklist for 2028
The boxes prospective early calendar states will have to check are potentially a little different than they were for 2024
Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, stopped by The Hill Sunday on NewsNation to chat with Chris Stirewalt about an array of issues facing the party on Sunday. One of those topics? The 2028 presidential primary calendar.
While Stirewalt hit with the now-typical retrospective Biden-had-his-thumb-on-the-scale question about the decision-making behind the early states on the 2024 calendar, Martin parried with a line that has become rote for the DNC in 2025 looking ahead to 2028. In summary from The Hill:
“Martin, who was elected chair in February, said he is committed to making the process fair and said any state that wants an early primary date should be permitted to bid for one and be considered.”
Which, again, anyone who has read a calendar story since the November 2024 election has seen some variation of that line.1 Here is DNC deputy communications director Abhi Rahman in a story on Iowa and the 2028 calendar last month:
“The DNC is committed to running a fair, transparent, and rigorous process for the 2028 primary calendar. All states will have an opportunity to participate.”
Martin, however, took things a step further, outlining a rubric for those state parties that might pitch the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (DNCRBC) in the next year on being included among the states in the early window of the calendar for 2028.
“Martin also said he anticipates a crowded primary field in 2028 and said he wants to make sure the process for setting the calendar is guided by three principles: ‘One, it has to be rigorous. Two, it has to be efficient. Three, it has to be fair.’
“‘It has to be rigorous, in the sense that it battle tests our nominee and prepares them for the general election,’ he said, expanding on the first principle.
“Martin said it has to be ‘efficient’ in a way that ‘we don’t bankrupt our candidates in the early part of this process.’
“‘We want them to have resources for the general election because the only prize that matters is November.’
“‘And the third thing is that it has to be fair,’ he added. ‘It has to allow all of our candidates, which God knows how many candidates we’re going to have, to actually compete in those early states.’”
— emphasis is FHQ’s
First, that is revealing. It provides some initial insight into what the party, through the DNCRBC, will try to identify in states, the state parties of which will attempt to formally sell the panel on the virtues of their state being early in the 2028 order. And while this is an early set of (likely not all-encompassing) principles for that process next year, it does differ in some subtle ways from the guidelines the DNCRBC operated under when crafting the calendar rules for the 2024 cycle.
Let’s compare…