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Anna Kellar is the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Maine.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is taking a lot of blowback for her decision last month that former President Donald Trump is ineligible for the primary ballot in Maine. I’ve read the decision. It is substantive, well reasoned and specific. It’s not flippant. You may not like it. A lot of people weren’t going to like it no matter what it said. But it presents a serious consideration of the questions posed by the challengers.
Some people of conscience and integrity on both sides of the political spectrum agree with Bellows’ opinion. Laurence Tribe (liberal constitutional scholar) and J. Michael Luttig (noted conservative judge) both agree that a plain reading of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution would disqualify Trump from the ballot. Many others, such as Dmitry Bam of the University of Maine School of Law, see plenty of gray area. I know many progressives and conservatives alike who think the voters should decide.
But because people disagree with the opinion doesn’t mean Bellows reached that opinion for self-serving reasons. Perhaps some of the people who accuse the secretary of state of political hackery are projecting their motivations and actions onto her: They assume that she’s acting for political and personal gain because that’s what they would do in her shoes. In leveling these charges against her, some of Bellows’ critics reveal more about themselves than they do about her.
The thing is, once presented with the challenge to Trump’s qualification for the ballot, Bellows really had no choice but to do her duty and follow the evidence and the law. I can see how she came out where she did. Hers is not the final word, and there is a process that will have to play out from here. But let’s stand up for public officials who value their obligations and their oath of office above controversy, above political gain, above personal safety.
I’m sure the secretary of state would have liked to find any way out of having to do this, putting herself, her staff and her family at risk. Especially knowing what happened in Colorado, she knew what she was getting into. But she did her duty scrupulously.
People who don’t like the decision are totally free to criticize it. That’s the American way. But to deny that any person of integrity could disagree with them — rather, that any person who disagrees with them lacks integrity — undermines public confidence in the process — in due process — and encourages lawlessness. Adversaries should not be made out to be mortal enemies or removed from office for simply upholding an oath. To do so is to erode the fabric of democracy.
Dehumanizing political opponents is one of the tools that authoritarians use to divide us. Let us not fall for it. Dehumanizing our adversaries should be universally denounced. Thank you to those in Bellows’ opposing party who are standing up for decency and duty against these ugly personal attacks.
U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, U.S. Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree, and state leaders in both parties, whether they agree or disagree with the ruling, should stand shoulder to shoulder with Bellows and defend her for doing her duty. They should denounce violent threats against her.
Now that the Maine decision has been appealed to the Maine Superior Court and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Colorado decision, we hope that the courts will settle this matter quickly so that voters across the U.S., regardless of what state laws pertain, will have clarity come the presidential primaries.
