First, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled against allowing former President Donald Trump to run for his old job in that state. Then on Thursday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled the same for her state. Bellows, a Democrat, became the first election official act unilaterally.
After the Colorado decision, Trump went on Truth Social to blast the decision as a “pathetic gambit.” However, Trump made a more subtle remark about Maine’s secretary of state.
Trump made only one post about Bellow. He posted a link to her biography, which speaks for itself.
“In 2014, Secretary Bellows was the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Maine,” her biography says, clarifying her political commitments. “From 2005 to 2013, Secretary Bellows was executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.”
According to the biography, Bellows helped to bring ranked-choice voting to Maine, and she “championed… the national popular vote.”
“She was an original member of the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, promoting this new method of voting and traveling across the state to educate Mainers,” it says.
The Trump campaign immediately slammed the ruling. “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
The Trump campaign on Tuesday requested that Bellows disqualify herself from the case because she’d previously tweeted that Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” and bemoaned that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate after the Capitol attack. She refused to step aside.
Bellows made the order anyway, and she’s denied the accusations of overreach and personal bias.
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
Speaking to the Associated Press, Bellows added Thursday night, “My decision was based exclusively on the record presented to me at the hearing and was in no way influenced by my political affiliation or personal views about the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”
Take a look at Trump’s statement on Maine, compared to his statement on Colorado —
The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows’ decision to Maine’s state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court will likely have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and in the other states.
Colorado’s decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection.”
Maine is one of two states to split electoral votes, and Trump won one of Maine’s four electors in 2020. In other words, the secretary of state might be making a consequential decision ahead of a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.
By contrast, Colorado awards all its electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote. In 2020, Trump lost the state by 13 points, and he didn’t win any of its electors.
Until Bellows’ decision, every top state election official, whether Democrat or Republican, had rejected requests to bar Trump from the ballot, saying they didn’t have the power to remove him unless ordered to do so by a court.
In California, which has the largest trove of delegates in the 2024 presidential contest, Trump was included on the certified list of candidates released Thursday for the state’s March 5 primary.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber faced political pressure to reject Trump’s candidacy in the state, including from Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat who urged her in a Dec. 20 letter to “explore every legal option” to remove the former president from the California ballot. Weber later responded that she was guided by “the rule of law,” and indicated the proper venue to resolve ballot challenges was in the courts.
The timing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is unclear, but both sides want it fast.
Colorado’s Republican Party appealed the Colorado high court decision on Wednesday, urging an expedited schedule, and Trump is also expected to file an appeal within the week. The petitioners in the Colorado case on Thursday urged the nation’s highest court to adopt an even faster schedule so it could rule before March 5, known as Super Tuesday, when 16 states, including Colorado and Maine, are scheduled to vote in the Republican presidential nominating process.
The Associated Press contribtued to this article.