CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – New Hampshire Democrats went to bat Tuesday for their plan to preserve their state’s first presidential primary and Iowa’s first caucuses, but said if the national party doesn’t go along, New Hampshire will fight back hard.

In a telephone conference call, two state party leaders said Iowa and New Hampshire should remain first in 2008 and be followed by two more racially and ethnically diverse states. Other states would follow alone or in small groups, preventing “front-loading” that led candidates and the media to give short-shrift to many states in 2004, state Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan and former Chairman Joe Keefe said.

They said the rival “Michigan plan” to put two to four caucuses between Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008 appears to be gaining momentum with a study commission scheduled to make its final proposal on Dec. 10.

That plan “will really exacerbate front-loading, which I think is just not good for the process,” Sullivan said. “As a member of the Democratic National Committee, I want a process that will nominate a Democrat who will become president in 2008.”

So do commission members and Michigan Democrats who helped launch it, because Iowa and New Hampshire have such small minority populations. The Michigan plan probably would put a Southern state with a large black population and a southwestern state with a large Hispanic population ahead of New Hampshire.

Sullivan predicted that probably would produce a nominee by late January.

As Republican primaries and caucuses continued, she predicted, “our Democratic nominee will only be mentioned in the press stories when the Republicans are attacking that nominee.”

She said 12 contests packed into eight days in February 2004 demonstrated the problem. Candidates had to pick and choose where to campaign, and news coverage was diluted.

Keefe said front-loading disenfranchised voters in those states more than rules that prevented them from voting in January with Iowa and New Hampshire.

If front-loading were ended, he said, states would see that they could have “more impact in April than they would have in February going on the same day as 20 other states.”

New Hampshire’s plan would encourage a three- or four-month primary season by designating voting dates and strictly limiting the number of delegates that could be chosen on each.

New Hampshire law requires the state’s primary to be at least seven days ahead of any “similar contest.” The secretary of state decides what is similar, and has always said the Iowa caucuses are not.

But if a slew of caucuses were scheduled ahead of New Hampshire, the secretary of state undoubtedly would see them as “wolves in caucus clothing” and jump ahead of them, Keefe said.

And what if the commission does undercut the primary?

“We will resist that by whatever means necessary,” Keefe said. “We built this primary; it’s as important to our state as the (Kentucky) Derby is to Kentucky or Statue of Liberty to New York, and we’re not just going to let it go.”