AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows stepped into the national spotlight when she became the country’s first top elections official to rule former President Donald Trump is ineligible for the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot.
She’s done scores of television and radio interviews with national and regional outlets since her Dec. 28 decision, including chats with conservatives who have pushed her to explain how she found the Republican frontrunner violated Section 3 — the so-called insurrection clause — of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Bellows has focused less on her finding that Trump violated the Constitution by inciting the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, and more on the requirement under Maine election law for her to rule on challenges to the eligibility of candidates. Her emphasis on the process rather than politics of the decision has done little to blunt the sharp Republican criticism she has faced.
During interviews Monday and Tuesday with NPR, conservative New Hampshire radio host Drew Cline, and the Bangor-based WVOM duo of George Hale and Ric Tyler, Bellows reiterated that any registered Maine voter can challenge a candidate’s qualifications and that she must initially handle and rule on any challenges.
Her decision is far from final. Maine is only the second state to deem Trump ineligible after the Colorado Supreme Court made a similar decision last week. The former president’s attorneys filed an appeal Tuesday of Bellows’ decision in Kennebec County Superior Court. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to have the final say on the various national cases.
There is some urgency, since Maine’s first set of primary ballots ahead of the March 5 election is sent out on Jan. 20 to military and overseas voters. Rep. John Andrews, R-Paris, is also aiming to impeach Bellows, a move that faces slim chances of succeeding in the Democratic-led Legislature that begins its work on Wednesday.
“We will uphold and abide by whatever the courts decide,” Bellows told Cline.
She also stressed to both Cline and NPR’s Scott Detrow that she swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and follow the law while also condemning threats made against her and staff. She has also reiterated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment can apply to a candidate who “engaged” in but has not been convicted of or impeached for insurrection.
Trump’s attorneys have argued the president is not an “officer of the United States,” as covered under the 14th Amendment, but Bellows agreed with Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca, who testified as a witness last month at a hearing on the Maine challenges that Congress determined the presidency is an office when debating the post-Civil War amendment in 1866.
“Neither political considerations nor considerations of my own safety could play any role in this,” Bellows told Cline, of WFEA in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Once she established the legal guidelines requiring her to deal with the challenges to Trump’s candidacy, Bellows ventured more into why she determined Trump engaged in insurrection. She said she weighed the evidence each side presented during the December hearing and in legal briefs, noting Trump’s attorneys did not meaningfully dispute facts on the riot.
She cited multiple government investigations submitted into the record during the December hearing, including a U.S. Government Accountability Office report that more than 2,000 protesters breached the Capitol during the certification of the presidential election, assaulted nearly 175 police officers and caused about $2.7 billion in estimated damage during the Jan. 6 attack that led to at least seven deaths.
Bellows told NPR the evidence demonstrated the Capitol riots “occurred at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of the outgoing president.”
“And the United States Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government,” she said.
