President Biden has won the unsanctioned New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, despite having left his name off the ballot in response to an intra-party spat over the order of the party’s primary calendar.
Biden easily bested long-shot challenger Dean Phillips, with the Associated Press calling the race for the incumbent minutes after polls closed. Phillips, a three-term congressman from Minnesota, had secured just over 20 percent of the vote when the race was called. It remains unclear what percentage of the vote Biden has secured given his status as a write-in candidate.
While Iowa and New Hampshire have traditionally been the first states in Democrats’ nominating process, President Biden and the DNC decided South Carolina should kick start the party’s process this year in an effort to increase racial diversity. “The Democratic Party looks like America, and so does this proposal,” DNC Chair Jamie Harrison has said.
But New Hampshire secretary of state David Scanlan announced last year that the state would defy orders and hold its primary on January 23. The Granite State has a law that says the state must hold its primary one week before any similar contest.
In response, Biden elected not to put his name on the state’s primary ballot. As such, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee’s co-chairs, Minyon Moore and James Roosevelt Jr., told the state party that its primary “cannot be used as the first determining stage of the state’s delegate selection process and is considered detrimental.”
Still, Democrats urged voters to write-in Biden’s name. The Associated Press and CNN called the race for Biden minutes after the polls closed in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
Other progressive activists called on Granite State voters to write-in “Ceasefire now,” to send a message to Biden over the Israel-Hamas War.
Phillips launched his bid in late October and has spent weeks traveling around New Hampshire meeting with voters — or sometimes being stood up by voters:
“Sometimes if you build it, they don’t come,” Dean Phillips told reporters outside of the Manchester DoubleTree hotel this morning, after no voters showed up to his “Government Repair Truck Coffee Conversations” event in 22 degree weather. pic.twitter.com/x0lpVcRSnb
— jake rosen (@JakeMRosen) January 9, 2024
At a polling site on Tuesday, Phillips told National Review he was hoping a less-than-spectacular showing from Biden would help give him a boost in the other early states.
“Look, if I get in the 20s I think that’d be amazing,” he said. “Started at zero ten weeks ago, no name recognition, zero in the polls, a ragtag newly formed team without a lot of resources, without any of the party behind us. And if we can achieve that in just ten weeks, anything’s possible. And I think it’s also going to show that President Biden is a good man, but he’s weak.”
He said he has not spoken with the White House since launching his presidential bid. “I tried contacting them twice, and he would not take the call,” he said. “I’ve not had a single conversation with any of the cabinet members or the White House.”
Upon entering the race in October, Phillips said he felt called to challenge Biden because he is concerned the 81-year-old president will lose a general election rematch against former president Donald Trump. He said he tried to convince Biden to step aside and allow other Democratic candidates to run for president, and decided to launch his own bid when those efforts proved unsuccesful.
“This was not about me,” Phillips told CNN at the time. “But my inability to attract other candidates, to inspire the president to recognize that it is time, compels me to serve my country because it appears that President Joe Biden is going to lose the next election.”
Trump is currently beating Biden 47.2 percent to 44.3 percent in a hypothetical rematch, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
Phillips, a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has sought to portray himself as a moderate who prizes bipartisanship. But Phillips voted with Biden’s preferred position on issues 100 percent of the time in 2021-22, according to a FiveThirtyEight tracker. Those issues includes collective bargaining rights, expanded firearms regulations, out-of-state abortion service access, and funding for the war in Ukraine.
And he has declined to work with Republicans who he believes “bear responsibility” for the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, calling them “dangerous, plain and simple.”
Meanwhile, author and self-help guru Marianna Williamson has mounted another longshot presidential bid this cycle, despite having run an unsuccessful campaign in 2020.
Nationally, polling has Biden at 70 percent, Williamson at 7 percent and Phillips at just 3.3 percent, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
Other candidates on the unsanctioned ballot include rapper and repeat candidate Paperboy Love Prince and Vermin Supreme, a performance artist and activist who famously wears a boot on his head and has vowed to pass a law requiring people to brush their teeth if he wins the presidency.