Ex-Iowa Democratic leader takes new job in New Hampshire

Troy Price, who resigned as chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party after a disastrous leadoff caucus in 2020, is taking a new job in the fellow first-in-the-nation state New Hampshire.

Price will become executive director of the New Hampshire Democratic Party on Monday as it gears up for the 2022 elections and 2024 primary, officials said Friday.

Price resigned in February 2020 after a meltdown in tabulating results from the lead-off presidential caucuses led to a dayslong delay in reporting the results, inconsistences in the numbers and no clear winner.

The embarrassing episode also threatened Iowa’s cherished status as the first caucus of the presidential nomination season. But there was no mention of that in the press release announcing his hiring in New Hampshire, which typically holds the first primary. There, he received unanimous support from both a selection committee and the party's executive committee, officials said.

“New Hampshire Democrats are building an all-star team of experienced leaders to ensure that we organize and mobilize voters in every corner of the state,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley.

Buckley told WMUR-TV, which was first to report Price’s hiring , that Iowa’s problems were confined to the caucus process and have no relevance to the New Hampshire primary.

Price became the national face of the 2020 Iowa caucuses’ colossal meltdown after a digital app designed to streamline reporting results from individual caucus sites failed. The technical failure on caucus night prompted hundreds of precinct-level caucus leaders to attempt to telephone in their results, resulting in a backlog of calls that kept the state party from announcing final results for more than a week.

Final results were announced six days after the Feb. 3 Democratic caucuses — long after the immediate impact mattered given the caucuses’ typical value as a show of momentum.

Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders fought to a near tie, though The Associated Press opted not to call a winner because of lingering concerns about whether the results as reported by the party were fully accurate. An audit later blamed the national Democratic Party’s involvement in the Iowa caucuses for the problems, but said the state party should have bolstered its backup phone system.

Price had been a veteran of Iowa Democratic politics, working on Barack Obama’s 2012 and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaigns, in the administration of former Democratic Gov. Chet Culver and was executive director of One Iowa, an LGBTQ advocacy group.