By Tim Reid
WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) – South Carolina is poised to remain the Democrats’ first presidential primary state over Nevada after a vote by a powerful party committee on Friday, a racially fraught decision that pitted Black and Latino state leaders against each other.
After two days of sometimes acrimonious debate, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules & Bylaws Committee backed the bid by South Carolina – which has a large Black voter base – to remain the first state to vote on the party’s choice for its 2028 White House nominee. Nevada, which has a significant Latino electorate, had pushed for the top spot.
The DNC is likely to approve Friday’s decision at a full party meeting in August. The initial vote on Friday was close, with South Carolina receiving 26 votes to Nevada’s 19.
The decision is consequential because the first state to vote in a presidential nominating contest often helps to shape the field of candidates, drawing campaign spending and media attention.
During debate, the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Christale Spain, who is Black, said it was crucial for Democrats to make America’s South and its Black voters the start of its nominating process.
Black voters have faced setbacks in battles over political representation this year after a U.S. Supreme court decision hollowed out civil rights legislation, and state legislatures in the South redrew maps that voting rights groups say diluted Black voter power.
“When we are serious about changing this country, Democrats have to start winning in the South,” she said.
Senior Democrats from Nevada sent a letter to the DNC making their case, saying, “Nevada is a small, affordable, competitive battleground where candidates must build the broad, multiracial, working-class coalition that Democrats need to win nationally.”
The competition between the two states became a proxy battle between the party’s Black and Latino bases that exposed early internal divisions ahead of the battle to decide who will become the party’s 2028 White House standard bearer.
South Carolina’s pitch to go first centered on its large Black electorate, a crucial national voting bloc for Democrats that President Donald Trump and Republicans have drawn voters from in recent years.
Nevada countered that unlike Republican-led South Carolina, it is a key presidential battleground state with a large Hispanic population and a strong blue-collar union presence, two constituencies that Democrats must work harder to +win over in future elections.
In 2022, former Democratic President Joe Biden persuaded Democrats to overhaul their 2024 nominating calendar, ending Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status and putting South Carolina first. Nevada was put in second place.
Friday’s vote by the powerful DNC committee reflected robust pitches by South Carolina and Nevada in the fight for first place and late-night lobbying by party leaders on Thursday.
(Reporting by Tim Reid in Washington, editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)
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