Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips was carrying a box of coffee through the streets of Manchester, New Hampshire, on Saturday, when he briefly stopped to heckle the supporters of President Joe Biden. “I know you’re not going to vote for me,” he said to a small crowd standing in the dirty snow. “But at least I’m going to be on the ballot.”
One politician lightly taunting another’s supporters is an unusual thing to do, but the old rules have largely been set aside in New Hampshire this year as the state party revolts against the will of the Democratic National Committee. After 50 years of the Granite State voting first, the DNC gave that perk in 2024 to South Carolina, whose large Black population better reflects the party’s diverse base. (It also insulates Biden from an insurgent campaign.) But rather than move their vote to February 6, New Hampshire Democrats decided to hold their early primary anyway, escalating their tiff with the DNC, who then stripped the delegates from the primary. Without delegates, Biden’s campaign stated it was “obligated to comply” and bailed on the whole thing. So voters showing up on Tuesday will not see his name on the ballot. The choices are Phillips and Marianne Williamson — candidates hoping to capitalize on the absence of a president who is, right now, not very popular.
Williamson is a self-help author who made waves in the 2020 primary with her holistic diagnosis of a country mired by the sickness of big industry. She has returned to New Hampshire with that message updated for 2024: a focus on a ceasefire in Gaza and a message that Biden is a “weak” candidate who is “selfish” to be running for reelection at 81.
If Williamson, 71, has occasionally called out the president for being too old, then 55-year-old Phillips has made his whole campaign out of the issue, hoping to capitalize on the widely held concern. He’s so focused on Biden’s age that he is even willing to mix metaphors talking about the weakness of the Biden campaign on Fox News. “Here I am, a member of Congress, I see this train wreck occurring and someone’s got to say the quiet part out loud,” he told Brian Kilmeade on Monday. “The same thing everybody in Washington talks about quietly, behind closed doors, you get in front of TV cameras and it’s a totally different ballgame.”
Phillips has also found a few allies in Silicon Valley. His PAC has reportedly received hundreds of thousands in donations from OpenAI founder Sam Altman and others in the artificial-intelligence world. Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman has also donated $1 million to Phillips’s PAC in the hopes he could unseat Biden. This may have resulted in some changes to Phillips’s policy ideas: After gaining Ackman’s support, he changed the language on DEI initiatives on his campaign-policy website. And after meeting Altman last year, he started talking about AI in public a whole lot more. In New Hampshire last week, he even said he would be the first-ever “AI president.” Despite these donations, he is still polling behind Biden by 30 to 60 points. (Phillips, who made a killing in the gelato business before Congress, has also spent $5 million of his own money.)
The Biden campaign is steadfastly refusing to comment on either campaign, probably in hopes of not elevating the president’s opponents.
Adding to the unusual nature of this non-primary, there are two off-menu choices. Some progressive voters are urging Democrats to write in “ceasefire” as a pressure campaign for the Biden administration to pressure Israel to stop its war in Gaza. And Biden surrogates like Representative Ro Khanna and Boston mayor Michelle Wu have been visiting the state as part of a write-in campaign on behalf of the president. In an appearance in Concord on Sunday, Khanna — who has not been afraid to criticize Biden in the past — whipped up support for an incumbent with an approval rating below 40 percent. “People will recognize the stakes and get out there,” Khanna said.
There’s interference out there, too. On Monday, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced it would investigate a robocall, stating that an “artificially generated” voice mimicking Biden urged Democrats to stay home in an “unlawful attempt” to suppress the vote. As if the process for New Hampshire Democrats wasn’t confusing enough.
