The timing of the New Hampshire debate, sandwiched between the Hanukkah and Christmas holidays, has particularly rankled activists in the state, who have openly protested the decision.

Martha Fuller Clark, a state senator in New Hampshire who is not yet backing a candidate, said that she approached the party chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, at the meeting in Minnesota last week and expressed her disappointment.

“She seemed unwilling to consider a revision of the schedule,” Ms. Fuller Clark said. “She just said that whatever schedule she put out, people would be unhappy with.”

“If there isn’t an opportunity for lots of debates and consideration, it’s just really, I think, making it much more difficult” for the candidates to reach voters before the voting begins, she said.