Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, in the middle of a five-day campaign swing through the traditional first-in-the-nation presidential primary state, says she hopes to face off with President Joe Biden on the debate stage but is under no illusions that it will happen.

Williamson, a best-selling author and spiritual adviser who last weekend launched her second straight White House run, is the first Democrat with any kind of national following to primary challenge the president.

“Your primary’s going to happen on schedule. So whether or not the president participates, this is where it’s going to happen,” Williamson told this reporter in an interview on Wednesday.

She says she’ll spend plenty of her time campaigning in New Hampshire going forward. That comes as no surprise as political strategists have said that if there’s going to be a primary challenge against Biden, New Hampshire appears to be the state where the action will take place.

New Hampshire, which prides itself on its well-informed electorate and its emphasis on small-scale and grassroots retail politics, has for a century held the first primary in the race for the White House. While Republicans are making no changes to their presidential nominating calendar in the 2024 election cycle, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last month voted overwhelmingly to approve a new top of the calendar pushed by Biden that upends the traditional schedule.

New Hampshire is expected to vote second in the DNC’s calendar, along with Nevada, three days after South Carolina, under the new schedule.

But Granite State Democrats warn that New Hampshire will still go first — courtesy of a long-standing state law that mandates the leadoff primary position — and that a primary not sanctioned by the DNC, where Biden doesn’t take part, could invite trouble for the president.

“I’m here. And I think that New Hampshire-ites have a tradition of weighing in and you will have a chance to weigh in whether the president is here or not. I hope he’s here and I hope he will debate me, but we’ll see,” Williamson said.

But minutes later, she acknowledged that’s not part of the plan for Biden or Democratic Party officials.

“I don’t think anybody has any illusions that they intend in any way, shape, or form, for the president to share the stage with me,” she said. 

During the 2020 cycle, Williamson was an unconventional candidate who preached the politics of love. She emphasized “six pillars for a season of moral repair,” including economic justice. She proposed creating a Department of Children and Youths and a Department of Peace, and she pushed for reparations for the descendants of African-American slaves. Among her unorthodox acts was holding a meditation session while campaigning in New Hampshire.

But Williamson struggled with fundraising and failed to qualify for most of the Democratic presidential debates. Days after laying off most of her small staff, she dropped out of the race in January 2020, just ahead of the start of the nomination primaries and caucuses.

While most leaders in the Democratic Party from both the establishment and progressive wings say they will support Biden if he seeks a second term, Williamson has said the U.S. is on the “wrong road” under Biden and that it was “time to move on” from the 80-year-old president.

“I have a right to run. This is democracy,” Williamson said this week. And pointing to the Democrats, she charged “how can a party claim to be champion of democracy if anything about its initial process is the suppression of that democracy. And make no doubt about it, mocking me, deriding me, smearing me, is a way of trying to suppress my voice.”

Williamson is once again pushing “an agenda of fundamental economic reform.” She argued “that is not what the president offers. What the president offers is the amelioration of stress. What the president offers is doing what we can here and there to make life easier for people in an unjust system.”

The candidate is advocating for universal health care, tuition-free college and tech school, the removal of all college loan debt, a $15 per hour minimum wage, free childcare, and paid family and medical leave. “These are moderate positions in every other advanced democracy,” she said. “The American people have been trained to expect too little.”

She criticized Biden’s performance in the White House, saying “when the president says ‘give me another four years to finish the job,’ what job? Because the things I’m complaining about are things he could have done in his first four years.”

And she vowed that “much more could be done and if I’m president it will be done.”

Sununu’s timetable

Gov. Chris Sununu, who says he’s seriously considering a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, gathers next week with some of his top political contributors.

The popular governor, who was easily re-elected in November to a fourth two-year term steering New Hampshire, will host donors at an event at the Bedford Village Inn on Wednesday.

Last weekend, Sununu spoke to roughly 100 top GOP donors at an economic retreat in Palm Beach, Florida hosted by the politically influential and fiscal conservative group the Club for Growth.

Sununu has repeatedly said a 2024 decision would come following the conclusion of the legislative session and the signing of the state’s next biennial budget.

“I think the entire presidential timetable will start coming into full vision, full gear, later this summer sometime. We’re not rushing anything. There’s a lot of interest and that’s kind of exciting,” Sununu told this reporter on the sidelines of the donor retreat.

Pointing to the first two contests in the GOP presidential nominating calendar, the governor said he is in no rush.

“You’re talking about states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where the vast majority of people don’t make their decision until the last few weeks,” Sununu said. “There are lots of opportunities. The average voter is just getting over the hangover of November of ‘22.”

Sununu said his mission right now is “really about making the party bigger, talking to independents, talking to the next generation of voters. That’s going very, very well. We’re doing a lot of earned media all across. We’re having some fun and bragging about the New Hampshire model.”

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