Raphael Warnock’s victory in the Georgia Senate runoff last night will also serve as vindication for President Biden on a different front: His recent push for party leaders to make major changes to the 2024 presidential primary calendar.
Biden last week asked Democratic National Committee leaders to strip Iowa of its first-in-the-nation status, and instead, make South Carolina the first state to hold a primary, with Nevada and New Hampshire coming a few days later – then, followed by none other than the state of Georgia.
Now that Warnock has defeated Republican Herschel Walker in the Senate runoff, a Democratic official tells CNN this morning that the result only bolsters Biden’s case for bumping up Georgia too much earlier in the primary calendar. The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee approved the plan last week and it now must be approved by the full committee early next year.
There’s no question now that it is simply “the right thing to do,” the official said.
The state is not only made up of critical demographic groups that are core to the Democratic coalition – Black voters and suburban voters, growing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Latino populations — the fact that Warnock has now been on the ballot four times in the last two years and that Biden made history by winning the state in 2020 (making him the first Democrat to win the state in almost three decades) undeniably solidifies Georgia’s battleground state status, the Democratic official said.
In other words: Going forward, Georgia would no doubt be counted on by Democratic presidential candidates as a state that can help put them over the top.
In his letter to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee members explaining his decision to ask for changes to the 2024 primary calendar, Biden emphasized the importance of giving voters of color a bigger voice.
“Just like my Administration, the Democratic Party has worked hard to reflect the diversity of America – but our nominating process does not,” the president’s letter said. “For fifty years, the first month of our presidential nominating process has been a treasured part of our democratic process, but it is time to update the process for the 21st century.”
