The same state where enslaved Africans first arrived will give Black voters the first voice in the 2028 Democratic race
TheGrio...
The Democratic National Committee voted to keep South Carolina as the first presidential primary in 2028, cementing Black voters’ influential role in choosing the party’s next nominee.
The influence of Black voters in the Democratic Party was cemented on Friday when the Democratic National Committee voted to keep South Carolina as the first-in-the-nation primary state in the 2028 presidential election. The decision from the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, which gives Black voters a coveted role in shaping the outcome of the election for the 48th President of the United States, is widely seen as the party’s nod to its most loyal voting bloc.
“This really sends a strong message that the tide is turning, and people are now understanding what we’ve been saying and feeling as Black voters in the Democratic Party for a very long time,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist who advises national Democratic campaigns and is a native of South Carolina. “It would have been a slap in the face, quite frankly, because we’ve proven our net worth and our network time and time again.”
Since 1964, nearly 80-90% of Black voters have cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential nominee, the highest support being for Barack Obama, America’s first Black president, in 2008 at 91%. In 2024, the most recent presidential election, 83% of Black voters backed Kamala Harris. No other group has backed the Democratic Party so consistently.
Black voters make up 60% of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina, giving them an outsized role in determining who wins the state’s presidential primary. Every candidate who has pulled out a win in South Carolina, which comes with 55 pledged delegates, has gone on to win the presidency–with one exception being John Edwards in 2004.
As legend would have it, it was Black South Carolinians who voted for former President Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, famously saving his then-struggling campaign. Biden later returned the favor by urging South Carolina to lead the 2024 presidential primary cycle. Friday’s vote secured the Palmetto State’s position, sending a message to Black voters in South Carolina and beyond.
Seawright, who also advises top Democrats like U.S. Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), giving Black voters the power to be the first to have their say in the 2028 presidential primaries, is both politically and historically significant, given the fact that 40%-50% of enslaved Africans trafficked to the United States came through the port of Charleston, South Carolina.
“The same hands that once picked cotton now will have the first say-so of who gets to pick the presidential nominee for the party that represents best the interests of Black Americans. That’s a powerful story,” he told theGrio.
Khalil Thompson, a political strategist and founder and executive director of Win With Black Men, says the DNC’s vote for South Carolina to lead the 2028 contest on Jan. 22, 2028, is especially meaningful given recent failed attempts to redistrict the congressional maps in the Palmetto State to eliminate its lone majority-Black districts.
“It’s historic to see that we now have diversity in the voting process,” Thompson told theGrio. “Especially after what we saw with the Republicans in the state legislature trying to redistrict, and then voters showing up in massive numbers during their primary and saying, ‘No, you’re not going to take away our voice or our vote and our power.’”
Several states in the South have eliminated Black voting power through redistricting following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and made it harder to prove racial discrimination in voting. Insiders argued that things turned out differently in South Carolina because Republicans feared backlash in the form of a high turnout of Black voters in the general election.
“This is just a lovely closing of that chapter and moving on to a new part for democratic politics, so that Democrats can do something hopefully good in the state of South Carolina,” said Thompson.
South Carolina’s selection as the Democratic Party’s first-in-the-nation primary state also ensures that the policies most pertinent to Black voters–from voting rights and public safety to racial justice–are front and center early in the presidential cycle.
“I think this gives an opportunity for someone to test drive their political currency and their value with Black voters on the whole,” said Seawright.
Thompson said the primary position also brings more economic viability to South Carolina through tens of millions of dollars spent by campaigns to reach voters, telling theGrio, “It now allows an economic driver to truly be there and I think change not only the industries but whether you’re a bus company, you do audio visual, what have you, to be a part of it.”
Christale Spain, the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, who led the petition for South Carolina as a member of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, said the vote “recognizes the importance of Black and rural voters in shaping the Democratic Party’s future.”
“Time and time again, South Carolina Democrats have shown that we know how to choose a presidential nominee who can unite our party and win in November,” she said.
As Thompson put it, “We now have an opportunity to show the richness and the vastness of the African-American experience and have it be central in the primary conversation, especially for presidential candidates.”