President Joe Biden is running for a second four-year term in the White House, but his name won’t appear on the Democratic ballot early next year when the Granite State holds its first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

With New Hampshire on course to hold its primary before the Democratic National Committee’s revamped 2024 nominating calendar allows, Biden will abide by his party’s rules and will not visit the Secretary of State’s office before Friday’s candidate filing deadline, just as Republican candidates have been doing for the past two weeks.

“While the president wishes to participate in the Primary, he is obligated as a Democratic candidate for President to comply with the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2024 Democratic National Convention promulgated by the Democratic National Committee,” Biden 2024 campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez wrote in a letter Tuesday to longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley.

New Hampshire Secretary of State Dave Scanlan, reacting to the news, said that “the decision of President Biden to shun the voters of the New Hampshire ‘First-in-the-Nation’ Presidential Primary is not unexpected but still disappointing.”

The Granite State has held the first presidential primary in both major political parties’ nominating calendars for a century, and Iowa has held the lead-off caucuses for the Democrats and Republicans for half a century.

But Democrats for years have knocked both Iowa and New Hampshire as unrepresentative of the party as a whole, for being largely White with few major urban areas. Nevada and South Carolina, which in recent cycles have voted third and fourth on the calendar, are much more diverse than either Iowa or New Hampshire. Citing a more diverse electorate, those two states were moved up in the calendar by the national party.

Scanlan called out that argument as a false flag.

“Despite all the rhetoric about diversity in the presidential nominating process, this issue is really about who determines the eventual nominee – the national political party or the voters,” Scanlan said in his statement.

While Republicans aren’t making major changes to their schedule, the DNC earlier this year overwhelmingly approved a calendar proposed by President Biden to move South Carolina to the lead position, with a Feb. 3, 2024, primary. New Hampshire and Nevada are scheduled to hold primaries three days later, with Iowa entirely losing its early state position. The president and supporters of the plan have argued that the revised calendar would empower minority voters, whom Democrats have long relied on but have at times taken for granted.

But New Hampshire has a nearly half-century-old law that mandates that it hold the first presidential primary, a week ahead of any similar contest. To comply with the DNC’s wishes, New Hampshire would have needed to scrap its law protecting its first-in-the-nation primary status and expand access to early voting. However, with Republicans in control of New Hampshire’s governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature, state Democrats repeatedly argued that was a non-starter.

Scanlan’s said he’ll set the date of the primary after the presidential filing period ends this week. He’s hinted that the contest would likely be held early next year, with January 23 as the date most political observers predict for the primary.

As a result, New Hampshire Democrats could lose half of their delegates next summer at their party’s presidential nominating convention, under DNC penalties passed last year.

“New Hampshire remains the one place where ANY United States citizen who is qualified to run for president can attempt to make it happen,” Scanlan wrote Wednesday. “Ballot access is extremely easy, and a candidate does not need high name recognition or wealth to run a campaign here. For over 100 years, New Hampshire has represented the purest form of democracy in the presidential nominating process, and we will fight to protect it.”

While top Democrats in the Granite State are expected to lead a write-in campaign for Biden in the primary, the president’s decision to skip putting his name on the ballot could lead to a protest vote in New Hampshire.

The president is undoubtedly the commanding front-runner for his party’s nomination, but polls indicate Biden has faced plenty of concerns from Democrats over his age and physical and mental stamina. The president is already facing a long-shot primary challenge from best-selling author spiritual adviser Marianne Williamson, who is making her second straight White House run.

Biden was also facing an uphill primary challenge from environmental lawyer and high-profile vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is a scion of arguably the nation’s most famous family political dynasty. But Kennedy announced at a campaign event in Philadelphia earlier this month that he would now seek the White House as an independent candidate.

Three-term U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who’s seriously mulling a primary challenge against Biden, may head to New Hampshire on Friday to file and launch a 2024 Democratic presidential campaign.

The state party continued to beat the drum for Biden following the announcement.

“The reality is that Joe Biden will win the NH FITN Primary in January, win renomination in Chicago and will be re-elected next November,” Buckley said in a statement. “NH voters know and trust Joe Biden, that’s why he is leading Trump in NH by double digits.”

The state’s all-Democratic Congressional delegation offered no immediate reaction.

Sununu says GOP primary race in NH is ‘wide open’

Former President Donald Trump may be the commanding front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, but vocal GOP Trump critic Gov. Chris Sununu argues the primary race in New Hampshire is still “wide open.”

Sununu, who’s repeatedly said he’ll make an endorsement in the Republican presidential primary later this year, has been teaming up with several of the White House hopefuls on the campaign trail in the Granite State. On Tuesday, Sununu met up with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and for the first time spent an entire day campaigning with a Republican presidential candidate.

Asked by this reporter if his full day with DeSantis was any kind of signal, Sununu emphasized that “it’s a signal that Ron’s making a commitment to New Hampshire.”

DeSantis for months had second place in the polls to himself, ahead of the rest of the field of Republican White House contenders.

But former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley leapfrogged DeSantis to stand in second place in some of the most recent polls in New Hampshire and in her home state, which holds the first southern contest and votes fourth in the Republican schedule.

“I think there’s three or four candidates that are clearly surging ahead,” Sununu said as he joined DeSantis in taking questions from reporters at the Red Arrow Diner in Londonderry — their first stop on Tuesday.

Later, joining DeSantis in a joint interview in Concord, Sununu reiterated that “the race is wide open. I think that’s the most important message.”

Sununu acknowledged that Granite State voters are traditionally late deciders in the primary.

“Folks won’t make their decision who they’re voting for untill maybe late December, early January,” he said. “So still plenty of time to actually earn those votes.”

While he’s concentrated much of his time the past two months in Iowa, which leads off the GOP nominating calendar, DeSantis on Tuesday returned to New Hampshire for the second straight week.

“We are going to be in New Hampshire and in Iowa nonstop between now and the caucuses and the primary. I think you got to show up. I think you got to earn the vote,” DeSantis said.

While Trump appeared a rally here Monday, he’s held a much more limited campaign schedule that DeSantis.

“Nobody is entitled to this,” DeSantis said. “You’re not going to see me out there wedded to the teleprompter. I’m going to go out there and let it rip. I’m going to take all the questions and we’re going to shake the hands and we’re going to earn this thing the way you need to.”

Sununu has teamed up with many of DeSantis’ rivals on the campaign trail, including Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Scott, who last week returned to New Hampshire to file to place his name on the state’s GOP presidential primary ballot, on Monday told staffers that moving forward he’d concentrate nearly all of this campaign time in Iowa.

Sununu wouldn’t say if Scott’s move knocked him out of contention to earn an endorsement.

“Every candidate has to decide what’s best for their campaign,” Sununu said. “I believe that every candidate’s campaign is going to do better really splitting their time between Iowa and New Hampshire. Two different types of voters but you have to connect with those voters. You’ve got to earn your time there.”

“You can’t just do well in Iowa and then think it’s going to translate to success here in New Hampshire,” Sununu added. “It doesn’t really work that way.”

The governor, who flirted for months with a White House run of his own before announcing in June that he wouldn’t seek the presidency, said he’ll makehis endorsement “when the mood hits me.”

“When I know, everyone else will know,” Sununu said.