Putting South Carolina First Could Mean Less Power For Black Voters

The history of the Democratic National Committee reshaping its primary calendar is the story of unintended consequences. And history, to paraphrase the old line, may not be repeating itself — but it sure does seem to be rhyming.

Nearly 40 years ago, the DNC unwittingly elevated Jesse Jackson by frontloading its schedule with Southern states. At the time, committee members hoped the shift would help a moderate white candidate, who they thought could more easily win a general election. Instead, Southern Black voters rallied to Jackson’s history-making candidacy. On Friday, the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee again sought to push its nomination fight to the South.

This time, though, the panel’s decision to lift South Carolina to first-in-the-nation status was done expressly with the state’s Black voters in mind. The party wanted to reward their most loyal constituency and those voters who, in the modern era, have invariably determined its nominees.

Yet in making South Carolina first overall, rather than keeping the state in its previous role as first in the South, the party risks diluting the influence of Southern Black voters.

The state traded the prospect of nominating power for attention and money. It will get a wealth of candidate visits, and its state party will reap a financial windfall.

But South Carolina will now effectively become what Iowa was for the preceding half-century: the contest where also-rans are culled rather than the one that vaulted Democrats to the nomination or at least narrowed the race to a final two.

This could have profound implications for who the party nominates in 2028. The reason why Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) delighted, at least until this week, in his state coming third or even fourth was because it meant they played a decisive role. With the field narrowed by the time it got to South Carolina, Clyburn and the state’s Black voters could all but choose the nominee, as they memorably did in 2020 with Joe Biden.

With its population of Black churchgoers and white retirees and suburbanites, the South Carolina Democratic primary became what its GOP equivalent had been before the Trump era — the place where insurgencies went to die. The reason why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is batting .000 in presidential nominations is in large part because he couldn’t appeal to this AME-AARP demographic, the de facto Democratic establishment.

Now, though, whoever on the left emerges as the Sanders heir doesn’t have to concern themselves about his or her fate being decided by this Orangeburg-to-Isle of Palms coalition. The moderating force in the Democratic primary has now been shifted from batting cleanup to leadoff, to borrow Clyburn’s recent metaphor.

That could mean South Carolina winnows the field, as Iowa always did. But it may also just ensure the state’s voters splinter among so many mainstream Democrats that they only muddy who the top contender is from the establishment wing of the party.

There’s something else, which veterans of the Democratic presidential nominating wars were already chattering about Friday. South Carolina always stuck out of the early-state lineup because it was a surefire red state in the general election. If Democratic candidates don’t have to worry about undermining their prospects there in the fall, why fret over the risks of softening their efforts toward the state’s primary?

I doubt any formidable Democrat would dare skip South Carolina entirely — the symbolism of rejecting a state where half the primary voters are Black makes that a non-starter. Yet it’s certainly possible the new, six-state early window followed immediately by Super Tuesday will tempt more progressive candidates to downplay the state.

Why would Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), for example, spend significant time and money in South Carolina when she can potentially create a firewall in Nevada, New Mexico and Michigan, all states now in the early-vote window? AOC could spend (just) enough time in South Carolina and count on (just) enough of an establishment-lane fracture to post a respectable vote there and not have to worry if that means she comes in fourth. In years past that would be fatal to a campaign — now it could garner the coveted “better-than-expected.”

And before you know it, AOC would already be stumping with casino workers in Las Vegas and college students in Ann Arbor.

The other way South Carolina going first could lessen the clout of Black voters is if there are multiple Black candidates still in the race by the state’s primary. Were former Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to all be on the ballot there in 2028, it could rupture the Black community, potentially along gender lines. Again, this runs the risk of muddying the race more than clarifying it, as South Carolina has done in the past.

Now, what South Carolina partisans will tell you is that such a scenario would be empowering, because whoever wins the primary-within-a-primary of the state’s Black voters (and can also appeal the most to South Carolina’s white voters) will quickly emerge as the mainstream candidate to beat going forward.

But keep in mind that Democratic primaries, unlike their GOP counterparts, distribute delegates proportionally. They’re not designed for quick, winner-take-all knockouts. So, yes, South Carolina can and likely will cull a handful of poor-performing and financially strapped candidates. Yet many Democratic hopefuls will stay in the race, hoping that the quick, week-by-week succession of races gives them a chance to climb back into the competition.

It’s likely that Michigan and Virginia, which are slated to hold primaries at the end of the early window, will play the more pivotal role South Carolina did in past races. That will reward candidates who can either self-fund or raise significant money because of the size of the two.

If a candidate can win both of those states, they’ll be hard to stop for two reasons. For one, because the losers will find it difficult to raise the money to be viable in all the Super Tuesday states coming quickly after Michigan and Virginia; and also because, to give the DNC credit, these two states conveniently reflect the city-suburbs-small town demographic mix that also mirrors the country at large. So should one candidate win both, he or she can say they’re best equipped to run a general election campaign.

This, of course, is great news for Democratic stalwarts such as former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, his ally and former Virginia state Chair Susan Swecker and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who has been pushing to include Michigan in the early window since the Wolverines were playing in leather helmets (I kid, D2, I kid).

It is, however, less promising for South Carolina and its Black voters. Democratic primaries in Michigan and Virginia would, at most, have only about half the Black representation as in South Carolina — a blow for the very voters Democrats set out to elevate in the first place.