Nevada's first-in-the-nation primary bid gets boost from political group Latino Victory

An influential Latino political group is arguing that Nevada should be the first state to vote in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, directly challenging New Hampshire's traditional claim on the first-in-the-nation primary. 

CBS News has learned that Latino Victory is endorsing Nevada's push as national Democrats consider which states should have the earliest — and likely most influential — say in who the party's next presidential nominee is, after stark setbacks in the 2024 presidential election. 

"Maintaining the status quo or prioritizing less diverse states like New Hampshire would be a disadvantage to our party's presidential nominee," Katharine Pichardo, the president and CEO of Latino Victory said in a letter directed to influential DNC members. "Bottom line: Nevada is a diverse battleground that will produce a battle-tested nominee — and that is exactly what Democrats need at this moment to win back the White House." 

The show of support for Nevada's bid comes as the state continues on a collision course with New Hampshire and South Carolina. Internal party documents show they're also competing to be the first state to kick off the Democrats' 2028 presidential primary season. 

Being among the first states carries enormous influence, with candidates often frequenting those chosen with campaign events and showering them with money and attention that can help bolster party building efforts and build support among voters. 

The debate may seem esoteric, given the party brand issues Democrats have contended with and the fact that the 2028 election is still years away. But which states Democrats christen with the first positions in the political calendar could prove to be pivotal in the future identity of the party. 

The Democratic Party's primary calendar has been a point of contention in recent years. Standards had long held that the Iowa caucuses would start the season, while New Hampshire would have the first primary. South Carolina, with its deeply influential base of Black voters, was given an early state slot starting with the 2008 cycle, as was Nevada. 

But the relative lack of racial diversity in Iowa and New Hampshire, and a chaotic Iowa Caucus finish in 2020, led the party to overhaul its calendar for the 2024 cycle. 

Those changes jettisoned Iowa, put South Carolina first and led to a standoff with New Hampshire — which ended up holding a primary not sanctioned at the time by the party. 

Democrats are now rethinking the calendar once again, following a 2024 election that saw GOP President Trump win all seven of the nation's presidential battleground states, including Nevada. 

Nationwide in the 2024 election, Trump narrowly trailed former Vice President Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis, a shift towards the president that represented a major improvement from his past runs for the White House. Federal census data shows in Nevada, more than 30% of the population is Hispanic or Latino. 

Four or five states will be picked by Democratic leaders to have their respective 2028 nominating contests before Super Tuesday. Regional considerations are key here: one state each will be picked from the East, Midwest, South and West. 

The party's influential rules and bylaws panel is expected to start considering the applications at a Saturday meeting in Puerto Rico. 

Under its own longstanding state law, New Hampshire attempts to have the first presidential primary in the country. In a pitch to DNC members, New Hampshire's Democratic party argued the state "serves as a critical testing ground for whether candidates can attract independent voters—an issue that couldn't be more pressing for the Democratic Party nationally." 

"Moreover, the state's importance to winning the general election cannot be overstated: it was the closest state that Vice President Harris won in 2024, and history reminds us that had Al Gore won New Hampshire in 2000, which he lost by just over 7,000 votes, he would have been president regardless of Florida's outcome," the document reads. 

Whether DNC members follow that thought process remains to be seen. 

Meanwhile South Carolina, which then-President Joe Biden helped vault to the top slot for the 2024 cycle after voters in the state essentially saved his 2020 presidential primary campaign, remains incredibly influential in Democratic politics.  

"South Carolina offers the Democratic Party a proven, disciplined, and consequential first test of presidential candidates, one grounded in the voters who are the backbone of the Democratic coalition and in the real-world demands of building majorities," the state's Democratic party said in their initial pitch this year. 

Nevada has been working for months to try and become the first 2028 presidential primary state for Democrats. State party officials have also received support from Somos Votantes, a large national Latino organizing group. 

"The primary calendar shapes whose voices get to be heard first, so the order of the states in the presidential primary directly affect which voters candidates are forced to listen to early and then consistently," said Melissa Morales, founder and president of Somos Votantes. "Any process that fails to center Latinos early risks repeating mistakes of past cycles."

Documents reviewed by CBS News show that Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, New Mexico, Delaware, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia have started making pitches to the DNC to be among the first four or five states to hold 2028 nominating contests. 

Amid this debate, there are clear tensions among Democrats about how to address the left's stumbles in the 2024 presidential election, when Democrats lost the White House, Senate and failed to retake the House. 

The latest stage of the national party's work on the primary calendar comes weeks after a highly scrutinized  decision by DNC chairman Ken Martin to not publicly release a full report centered on the 2024 election cycle. 

The party of the incumbent president usually faces congressional losses in the midterms, and the Republican Party under President Donald Trump is already facing that prospect this fall. But even a successful midterm cycle for Democrats doesn't necessarily inoculate them from struggles and challenges in 2028. The fear of an outcome like the 2024 election is a dynamic that haunts the party's longer-view outlook. 

Setting the 2028 primary calendar could represent one of the first major signals about how the party is addressing  its setbacks in the last presidential election. 

"We know that the Democratic electorate is becoming more and more diverse with Latinos being the fastest growing demographic," Pichardo, the Latino Victory leader, told CBS News in an interview. "If Democrats are serious about winning back the working class, Latino, African-American, and AAPI voters, Nevada should be the first as it is a microcosm of America."