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AUGUSTA, Maine — Former President Donald Trump is ineligible for Maine’s 2024 Republican primary, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled Thursday in a move that will thrust her into the national spotlight.
It follows a similar decision from Colorado’s high court last week. Bellows, a Democrat, is the first top state election official to remove Trump from the ballot, but this will not be the final word. The Colorado decision cuts against most others and is likely to be appealed to the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, and the Maine ruling can be appealed into the state court system.
The 34-page ruling from Bellows hues to the Colorado decision by saying Trump does not qualify for the ballot for violating the so-called insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by inciting the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021.
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred,” Bellows wrote. “I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
The decision comes one day after Trump asked Bellows to recuse herself from the decision for “bias,” citing a photo taken earlier this year at the White House with President Joe Biden and social media posts in which she referred to the riots as an insurrection.
In a statement released Thursday after the decision, the Trump campaign lashed out at Bellows, calling her “a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.”
Nearly two weeks ago, Bellows presided over a State House hearing at which lawyers for Trump and those who challenged his ballot status argued their cases. The former president’s legal team argued that Bellows lacked the power to remove Trump from the ballot, while his challengers argued that the 14th Amendment applied to Trump.
There is little precedent in this area of the law. The 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War to keep former Confederates out of the government. It bars anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the U.S. from holding public office without congressional approval.
The legal theory behind the Trump challenges, which was fueled by two conservative law professors and is now being pushed by national progressives, is that the open-ended language means that the 14th Amendment can be applied to presidents.
It never has been, and judges have generally ruled to that effect. On Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that Trump remains eligible for the ballot. A lower-court judge in Colorado said the disqualification does not apply to the president.
Colorado’s high court invalidated that ruling in part because the state has a specific provision in state law allowing the disqualification of constitutionally ineligible candidates. In Maine, the secretary of state is empowered to disqualify a candidate if any part of their declaration — which includes an oath saying they are eligible for office — is deemed false.
Bellows should see her profile rise in Democratic politics after the decision. She is seen as a future candidate for high office here. She ran a longshot 2014 campaign against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, and went on to serve two terms in the Maine Senate before the Legislature elected her secretary of state in late 2020.
There were three different challenges to Trump filed in Maine, with the most notable one coming from former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling and former state Sens. Tom Saviello of Wilton and Kim Rosen of Bucksport. Strimling is a progressive Democrat. Saviello and Rosen most recently served in Augusta as Republicans, but Saviello is now an independent.
Trump and Biden are hurtling toward a rematch despite historic unpopularity. Biden’s approval sits just over 40 percent, while Trump’s favorability is just below that mark, according to Real Clear Politics data. The former president was indicted four times this year, including once on federal charges related to the Capitol riots.
If Bellows’ decision holds, four Republicans running active campaigns will be on the March 5 Republican presidential primary ballot. They are former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and longshot Ryan Binkley. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota is the only Democrat facing Biden on that party’s ballot.