AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills said Wednesday she respects the process Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows used to disqualify former President Donald Trump from this year’s Republican primary but thinks courts must settle the question at a national level.
Mills, a Democrat like Bellows, had not commented on the secretary of state’s Dec. 28 ruling until Wednesday, when her spokesperson issued a statement saying she recognizes Bellows was required under Maine law to rule on the three challenges to Trump’s eligibility and “respects the deliberations the secretary undertook” to make her decision.
It was the governor’s first statement on the momentous ruling that put Maine alongside Colorado as the only two states to disqualify Trump from the ballot. Mills stopped short of saying whether or not she agreed with Bellows’ finding that Trump engaged in insurrection by inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
However, Mills spokesperson Ben Goodman said his boss believes the question of Trump’s eligibility “must be answered by the courts” and “done so nationally rather than in a piecemeal fashion” by state.
“Without a judicial determination on that question, [Mills] believes that the decision of whether the former president should be considered for the presidency belongs in the hands of the people,” Goodman said.
Trump and his legal team have appealed Bellows’ decision to the Kennebec County Superior Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court may likely have the final say after the Colorado Supreme Court similarly ruled last month that Trump violated the 14th Amendment.
Mills also believes the resolution that Rep. John Andrews, R-Paris, introduced Wednesday to impeach Bellows is “unjustified.” The impeachment effort is unlikely to succeed in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
The resolution from Andrews said Bellows should have recused herself “for bias” from the decision on Trump’s eligibility because she served as an elector for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election he won over Trump.
That echoes criticism from attorneys for Trump, who remains the GOP favorite to take on Biden again in November while facing four pending criminal cases, and other Republicans have leveled against Bellows since her December decision.
Bellows, who became the country’s first top elections official to deem Trump ineligible for the primary ballot, has defended her decision and role in the case as driven by Maine election law and the evidence presented to her at a December hearing on Trump’s eligibility. She said it proved the ex-president falsely claimed election fraud “to inflame his supporters” and direct them to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent the “peaceful transfer of power.”
Bellows said she and her staff have also faced threats since the ruling, with police investigating a “swatting” call made Dec. 29 to her Manchester home while she and her family were gone.
Goodman said Mills condemns the threats, adding citizens “have the right to disagree and to protest the decisions of their elected officials, but those forms of disagreement should never cross the line into violent rhetoric or action.”