California keeps Trump on ballot after Colorado and Maine use 14th Amendment to say 'No'

Author: Sudiksha Kochi Source: USA Today

December 29, 2023 at 12:50

The former president will be on California’s March 5 primary ballot, despite calls from some officials to disqualify him because of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

WASHINGTON — California Secretary of State Shirley Weber will include former President Donald Trump on her state's primary ballot despite pressure to remove the GOP frontrunner over his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The California slate − published late Thursday − came after Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said she would bounce Trump from that state's ballot, citing “the insurrectionist ban” of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment that opponents of the former president and some conservative legal scholars say should prevent him from holding office again.

More: Maine joined Colorado in banning Trump from 2024 primary ballot. What happens next?

Last week, Colorado's state Supreme Court ruled Trump was ineligible to run for president in a bombshell ruling that gave the first high-level judicial approval to arguments that the 14th Amendment could disqualify Trump. Republicans have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and his name was returned to the ballot pending the high court's review.

California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat, sent a letter to Weber last week using the same reasoning as her counterpart in Maine, and urged Weber to “explore every legal option” to remove Trump from the ballot.

“This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of democracy,” Kounalakis wrote.

More:Former federal judge says the Constitution could disqualify Donald Trump in 2024, not Joe Biden's actions

But Weber wasn't perusaded. She told Kounalakis in a reply that, as California’s chief election officer, she is a steward of “free and fair elections and the democratic process” and must place the “sanctity of these elections above partisan politics.”

“Removing a candidate from the ballot under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not something my office takes lightly and is not as simple as the requirement that a person be at least 35 years old to be president," Weber wrote.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a prominent liberal, also opposed the 14th Amendment push.

“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” he said in a Friday statement. “But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”

President Joe Biden won California with more than 63% of the vote in 2020.

Trump faces federal criminal charges in Washington, D.C., over his alleged role in seeking to reverse his 2020 loss to Biden, and he is a defendant in a Georgia racketeering case over efforts to block Biden's victory in that state. He also faces trials in New York over alleged hush-money payments to an adult film actress, and in Miami for allegedly hoarding top secret documents.