Washington will not be one of the early states to hold a Democratic presidential primary in next year’s presidential election.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) leaders voted February 4 on a list of states picked to hold the party’s initial primaries in the 2024 election cycle. South Carolina will lead the way on February 3, 2024, followed later that month by Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan.
Washington state Democratic Party leaders hoped the Evergreen State would appear on that list. Its 2020 presidential primary was held in March. Last year, the party launched a bid under then-chair Tina Podlodowski to join the primary reshuffle.
In a conversation with Spokane Public Radio last summer, Podlodowski said she believed Washington stood a strong chance of getting one of the few available slots because of its diverse population, proportion of Indigenous tribes, and high union membership rates.
But Washington faced a lot of competition. Seventeen states vied for just a handful of slots. There was only one space open for a Western state. Washington, Nevada and Colorado wanted the nod. Nevada got it.
State Democratic leaders took a positive view of the situation. In a statement Monday, Podlodowski’s successor as party chair, Shasti Conrad, said Washington could claim some credit for helping steer early primaries away from longtime leaders Iowa and New Hampshire, which had come under criticism for having an outsized role in selecting the Democratic nominee every four years, but whose population does not reflect the current Democratic base.
“We are confident the Washington state Presidential Primary proposal notably moved the needle in emphasizing the role AAPI, Labor and Native American voters play in our national process,” Conrad said. “We are hopeful the DNC will continue to strengthen bonds with these communities in the states selected and beyond the early window.”
Conrad also said Washington would be good candidate for an early slot in 2028, if the DNC wants to shuffle the calendar again. That is possible: President Biden and some national party leaders have suggested rotating the early primaries among multiple states over time.
