AUGUSTA, Maine — Three challenges make a long list of arguments that former President Donald Trump should be kept off Maine’s 2024 Republican primary ballot, but similar ones are failing in other states.
The challenges to Trump’s candidacy were filed with Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ office ahead of a Friday deadline. Two of them say Trump should be barred for inciting the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” against the U.S. from holding office.
Maine is among the dozens of states now dealing with similar challenges. But seven of them have already been turned back by judges, and none of them have succeeded so far, according to an ABC News count. It signals an uphill battle for anti-Trump activists.
The most notable Maine challenge came from an attorney representing three former elected officials: former centrist Republican state Sens. Tom Saviello of Wilton and Kim Rosen of Bucksport, as well as former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling, a progressive Democrat.
It looks to poke holes in some of the reasons that Trump’s candidacy has been upheld in other states. For example, a Colorado judge ruled in November that the former president had engaged in an insurrection but that the relevant part of the 14th Amendment does not apply to the president.
The former Maine officials lean on historic records to make their case. During an 1866 debate in the U.S. Senate on the 14th Amendment, which was intended to keep former Confederates out of the government, a Maine senator who supported the change indicated that he thought it applied to presidents.
“Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,” then Sen. Lot Morrill, a Republican, said to a Democratic opponent of the measure.
The 14th Amendment has been rarely used in modern times. The Colorado case is still active, but Axios reported that the state’s fully Democratic high court looked like it was ready to take Trump’s side in the case, with one justice even calling the lower court’s definition of insurrection overly broad.
Bellows, a Democrat, is evaluating the Maine challenges now. Any challenge that remains active will be the subject of administrative hearings, after which the secretary of state’s office will issue a ruling on each one. Those outcomes can be appealed to state court.
The final word on challenges to Trump’s candidacy may be from the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. Media outlets have speculated that the Colorado case is likely to go there, while noting that judges of all persuasions are usually reluctant to wade into electoral politics.
“Who wants to be the judge that disqualifies the leading presidential candidate on the Republican ticket? I mean, who wants to be that judge?” Josh Blackman, a conservative professor at the South Texas College of Law, told ABC News.
