As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, a 47-year-old who rose to his position from state politics in South Carolina two years ago and whose profile has risen along with that of his state, must try to mediate between the irate state Democrats and a White House that expects allegiance from the national organization. For now, Harrison is optimistic about everything. The situation in New Hampshire. Biden’s old age. The party’s declining share in many demographics, especially Latino voters and those without college degrees. A dire map of the Senate, where Democratic incumbents in Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia could fall, along with former Democratic Senator in Arizona Kyrsten Sinema, plunging Democrats into an undetermined minority.
In Harrison’s office at DNC headquarters, which faces the dome of the Capitol, hangs a portrait of Biden with Jim Clyburn, the 82-year-old South Carolina congressman whose endorsement and 2020 Biden champion is credited with saving of his candidacy. . Above Harrison’s desk hangs a vintage sign for Ron Brown, who became the first black president of the DNC in 1989. Brown and Clyburn are both heroes to Harrison, who was Clyburn’s intern and later his director of floor operations when the congressman served as majority whip. A lucrative career in the private sector followed as a lobbyist with the Podesta Group. With Clyburn’s blessing, he became chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Harrison then ran a highly high-profile, extremely expensive, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat in 2020. Now Clyburn’s protégé leads a DNC that has literally put their home state, where Harrison still lives with his family, first.
Harrison insisted that Clyburn never advocated for South Carolina to be the first ever state – only to maintain its status as the first of the southern states. “I think for him he always wanted South Carolina – and I felt the same way – we enjoyed and were very proud to be the first in the South,” Harrison told me one afternoon in June, while under that portrait sat. “People thought early on, oh god, Jaime is the president of the DNC, so that’s why he’s going to put his finger on the scale for South Carolina. And everyone will tell you, I was honest about this. All I wanted was for South Carolina to do that to stay, because I think it earned its spot as an early state. But of course South Carolina has moved up and Harrison is now excited. “National Geographic said that 90 percent of African Americans can trace one of their ancestors to South Carolina. In our primaries, 50 to 60 percent of the people who vote in the Democratic primaries will be black people. Just think how powerful this is, that the descendants of those enslaved people will be the very first people in this country who will determine the most powerful person on this planet. That is transformative.”
A few dissidents in the DNC, made up of New Hampshirites and some Iowans, progressives and labor unionists, see it differently: Biden elevates a state that hasn’t carried a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. Outside of Clyburn, there are few Democrats of note in South Carolina, and the state has the lowest percentage of union members in America. Progressive candidates could run into a wall of opposition there cycle after cycle.
The lingering dilemma, which no version of the primary calendar could solve, is how to explain the Democratic Party’s various long-term challenges. A South Carolina primary, the first in the nation, gives black moderates, a crucial Democratic constituency, the kind of clout many believe they deserve. Rural white voters — the kind to be courted in Iowa and New Hampshire — have proved disloyal to the Democratic brand. But there are only so many the Democrats can afford to lose in a general election. New Hampshire, which Biden won by less than 10 points in 2020, is not guaranteed eternal blue.
