On the trail: GOP leaders working to keep N.H. ‘first-in-the-nation’ Published: 4/30/2021 4:46:10 PM All the drama over New Hampshire potentially losing its century-long status for holding the first in the nation presidential primary is concentrated on the Democratic side of the calendar. And that’s the way New Hampshire GOP chair Steve Stepanek would like to keep it. Stepanek told the Monitor that he and the other top Republican Party officials in the Granite State are not aware of any current threat to the state’s cherished primary position in the GOP presidential nominating calendar. Stepanek, who was re-elected earlier this year to a second two-year term leading the state party, said that he and the chairs of the other four early voting states – Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada – as well as the Republican National Committee members from the four states, held a hospitality session at the group’s spring meeting in Dallas last week.