Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Iowa is on the verge of losing its first-in-the-nation status after botching its Democratic presidential caucuses last year.<\/p>\n
But Nevada, which is bidding to supplant Iowa at the front of the 2024 primary calendar, could hardly be making a worse case for itself as a well-oiled alternative.<\/p>\n
On Friday \u2014 as the state\u2019s Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak, signed legislation aiming to move Nevada\u2019s 2024 nominating contest in front of Iowa and New Hampshire \u2014 longstanding fissures within the state Democratic Party had just erupted. Democrats in Washoe County, the state\u2019s second-most populous, pulled what amounted to a party coup, wresting control of the state\u2019s midterm campaign operation away from the state party.<\/p>\n
The chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, Judith Whitmer, blasted the move as an \u201cinsurgency within our own party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watching the Nevada fireworks explode from halfway across the country, Iowa Democrats glimpsed a flicker of hope. As the national party considers the 2024 calendar, Iowa \u2014 in comparison to Nevada \u2014 might not look so bad anymore. And that might assist their efforts to save their cherished place in the early state pecking order.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutting on one of these is a mammoth undertaking,\u201d said Dave Nagle, a former congressman and former Iowa state Democratic Party chair. \u201cAnd you can\u2019t have the organizers in open warfare with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cThat\u2019s never happened in our state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or as Scott Brennan, an Iowa DNC member and a former state party chair, put it, \u201cTheir internal issues certainly create challenges that make it hard to see them moving forward successfully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevada\u2019s bid for an earlier nominating contest was never grounded in the cohesiveness of the state party. Rather, it was a response to widespread complaints within the Democratic Party about the lack of diversity in Iowa and New Hampshire, two heavily white states. The technological issues that marred the Iowa caucuses last year \u2014 so severe the Associated Press was never able to call a winner \u2014 only added to Democrats\u2019 complaints about the state.<\/p>\n
But Democrats in Nevada are making a run on Iowa in terms of dysfunction.<\/p>\n
This week, leaders of the Democratic Party in Washoe County, which includes Reno, moved to undercut the state party ahead of the midterm elections<\/a>, voting to run the state\u2019s 2022 coordinated campaign out of the county instead. The extraordinary move \u2014 which included statements of support from Sisolak, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Democratic state lawmakers, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association \u2014 came after a slate of Bernie Sanders allies endorsed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America won control of the state party<\/a>, a blow to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid\u2019s vaunted organizing machine in the swing state.<\/p>\n Whitmer called the uprising \u201cill-advised and undemocratic.\u201d<\/p>\n Even in the fractious world of state party politics, that\u2019s an uncommon level of animosity to put on display \u2014 especially with Democratic National Committee members who will decide the nominating calendar as early as next year all watching.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s just the Democrats.<\/p>\n Nevada Republicans may be in even worse shape, with state and local party officials in Las Vegas feuding over<\/a> a faction of pro-Trump activists, including some with ties to the Proud Boys, trying to take over the local party in Las Vegas\u2019 Clark County. And Republicans don\u2019t even want to change the traditional nominating calendar at all.<\/p>\n