The removal of Donald Trump from Maine’s presidential ballot “opens Pandora’s box”, one of his main rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination said, as reaction to the ruling.
The comment by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was among many from politicians on the right decrying the decision by Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, to preclude Trump, which the former president’s campaign called the “attempted theft of an election”.
Democrats and some legal experts, meanwhile, largely praised Maine’s decision to remove Trump’s name as the correct interpretation of the insurrection clause of the US constitution.
DeSantis was one of two Trump rivals for their party’s presidential nomination, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, to immediately accuse Bellows of engaging in partisan politics.
“The idea that one bureaucrat in an executive position can unilaterally disqualify someone from office turns on its head every notion of constitutional due process this country has abided by for over 200 years,” DeSantis said on Fox News.
“It opens up Pandora’s box. Can you have a Republican secretary of state disqualify Biden from the ballot?”
The Florida governor had previously claimed the Colorado supreme court’s decision earlier this month to disbar Trump was a “stunt” by Democrats designed to bolster his position in the Republican primary race.
Ramaswamy, who had threatened to withdraw from the Colorado primary in protest, issued a statement following the Maine ruling accusing “the system” of targeting Trump.
“This is what an actual threat to democracy looks like. The system is hellbent on taking this man out, the constitution be damned,” it said.
Two other Republicans still in the race, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, were more muted. “Nikki will beat Trump fair and square. It should be up to voters to decide who gets elected,” the former South Carolina governor’s campaign said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Christie pointed to his earlier position that Trump should remain on the ballot until convicted of insurrection following a trial that featured “evidence that’s accepted by a jury”, according to the New York Times.
Among the critics of the ruling in Maine was Susan Collins, one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial for inciting the deadly 6 January Capitol riot. Trump was acquitted, but at the time Collins denounced his “abuse of power” and “betrayal of his oath” to the constitution.
Collins said in a tweet that Bellows’s ruling should be overturned. “Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a secretary of state chosen by the legislature,” she wrote. “The … decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice.”
Her position was immediately challenged by political commentator Keith Olbermann, who replied: “I want to vote for Bill Clinton again. So by your logic, I can – right?”
Maine’s Democratic congressional delegation was split. “We are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should remain on the ballot,” Jared Golden, who voted to impeach Trump in 2021, said in a statement.
But Cherrie Pingree, who represents a more strongly Democratic district, was unequivocal. “The text of the 14th amendment is clear. No person who engaged in an insurrection against the government can ever again serve in elected office,” she wrote in a tweet.
“Our constitution is the very bedrock of America and our laws and it appears Trump’s actions [on 6 January 2021] are prohibited by the constitution.”
John Dean, a former White House lawyer for Richard Nixon, said Bellow’s ruling could lead to Trump’s removal from the ballot in even more states.
“The Maine decision is very solid. It was fully briefed, there is ample due process in this proceeding, and they just lost by a straight, honest reading of the 14th amendment,” he said in an interview with CNN.
“Trump’s in trouble. He’s in trouble wherever this is legitimately raised and addressed. So yes, the supreme court is going to have to weigh in. I want to see those strict constructionists, the originalists, get around that [insurrection] language. It looks so applicable, I don’t know what they can do with it other than take him off the ballot.”
