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The judgment handed down by Maine’s secretary of state on Thursday denying Donald Trump a place on the New England state’s primary ballot for the 2024 election was unsparing in its condemnation of the former president.
“No presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection,” Shenna Bellows, Maine’s top electoral official, wrote towards the end of her 34-page ruling, citing Trump’s role in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
“The US constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government,” she added.
Maine is the second US state to disqualify Trump from participating in next year’s presidential election after Colorado, which did the same earlier this month following a ruling by its own Supreme Court.
For now, the damage to Trump’s prospects from these challenges seems limited.
The former president is still expected to appear on the ballot in critical early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, which head to the polls in January.
By the time Colorado and Maine hold their presidential primaries in early March, the outcome of the race may well be decided or close to it.
And the attempts by the two states to strip Trump from their ballots is still at risk of being overturned by the US Supreme Court, if it decides to weigh in on the challenges.
But the moves by Colorado and Maine will nevertheless serve as a brutal reminder to US voters of the unprecedented nature of Trump’s efforts to deny President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 race and fuel the January 6 assault on the seat of the legislature.
Trump has benefited from perceptions among Republicans that he is a victim of political persecution, after federal and state prosecutors filed 91 criminal charges against him over the course of 2023.
According to the 538.com average, Trump is backed nationally by more than 61 per cent of Republican voters, with a 50 percentage point edge over his nearest rivals, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. Trump is also polling better than expected in a general election match-up against Biden and is ahead of him in key battleground states.
Many Democrats believe independent and swing voters will turn their backs on what they see as the chaos of Trump’s tenure in the White House, including his threats to US democracy. Yet other states have been reluctant to go down the path of preventing him from being a contender in 2024. California, the most populous state in the country, this week declined to remove the former president from its primary ballot, with Gavin Newsom, its Democratic governor, opposing such a move.
“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Newsom told Politico last week. “But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”
In Maine, senior lawmakers disagreed with the state’s decision. “[It] would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned,” Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, wrote on X.
Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat in the House of Representatives, said: “I voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection. I do not believe he should be re-elected as president of the United States. However, we are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.”
The challenges to Trump’s candidacy are based on the 14th amendment of the US constitution, which was created after the civil war in the 19th century. It bars people from holding office if they have sworn an oath to the constitution and engaged in insurrection against it — and is one of the few limitations on Americans running for president, along with being at least 35 years old and being a natural-born US citizen.
But even if Trump is allowed on the primary and general election ballots in every state, his judicial travails are likely to dominate the 2024 election. Trump is expected to face trial in some or all of the four cases that have been brought against him by federal and state prosecutors in Georgia, New York, Florida and Washington DC, on charges including falsifying business documents, mishandling sensitive government material, and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump’s campaign has continued to be defiant, including in the wake of the Maine decision this week. “We are witnessing, in real time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Steven Cheung, its spokesperson, said.
“Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power,” he added.
But Bellows’ scathing rebuke of the former president for his conduct on January 6 and the weeks before could still resonate as the 2024 primary campaign enters its most-heated stretch.
“Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it,” Bellows wrote.