U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is concerned by a longshot legal effort to block former President Donald Trump from Maine’s 2024 ballot, she said Friday.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and other election officials across the country are examining the legal theory that Trump should be barred from next year’s ballot under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although the Democratic secretary of state who ran a longshot campaign against Collins in 2014 has said the law will dictate that outcome.
Liberal groups have threatened to sue over the issue. A little-known Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, has filed a flurry of lawsuits, including in Maine, arguing that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution should disqualify Trump from the ballot.
The amendment disqualifies people who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office, although Trump is not being charged with insurrection for his role in the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.
Collins, a Republican who voted to convict Trump on a Democratic impeachment charge related to the riots in 2021 and said she will not support him in next year’s election, took a dim view of the theory when asked about in after a groundbreaking event for Global Secure Shipping’s new manufacturing facility in Old Town.
“I have not yet reviewed the legal arguments that are being made, but I’m always wary when a state official attempts to block an individual from gaining access to the ballot if that individual turns out to be the nominee of a political party,” she said.
The senator went on to accuse Bellows of trying to block an effort by the centrist political group No Labels to put together a presidential ticket as an alternative in a race between Trump and President Joe Biden, saying it “concerns me to have a state official trying to block ballot access.”
However, No Labels has neither committed to running a candidate nor formally applied for party status. The group has been advertising against Bellows in recent weeks after she sent it a cease-and-desist letter this spring over complaints her office received that Mainers who enrolled in the nascent party thought they were just signing a petition.
At the same time, Bellows’ office mailed notices to more than 6,000 new members to ensure they meant to join the party, which would prohibit them from participating in Maine’s 2024 Republican and Democratic presidential primaries that will be newly open to unenrolled voters.
In an interview, Bellows said that Collins “may have fallen victim to some partisan disinformation” on the issue. She said her office mailed the notices because many voters had alleged they were misled. No Labels has said it correctly represented things, and it told Spectrum News Maine this week that it has enough members to become a party in Maine.
Bellows and Attorney General Aaron Frey, who is also a Democrat, issued a statement last week that did not name Trump but said they would review legal theories on ballot access. Any decision would likely come after Dec. 1, when candidates must file for the Maine primaries. The secretary of state would have to then rule on any challenges to Trump’s petition.
“We want people to understand that this isn’t something novel or made up out of whole cloth,” Bellows said. “Any determination will be based on fact and the rule of law.”