Former President Donald Trump was removed from Maine’s 2024 presidential primary ballot by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday, declaring him ineligible under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Bellows’s decision means Maine will join Colorado in not having the former president on the GOP presidential primary ballot, barring intervention by a court. With the national spotlight on Bellows following the Thursday ruling, here’s a look at the official who booted Trump from Maine’s ballot.
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Prior to elected office, Bellows served as the executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine for eight years until 2013. Shortly after stepping down from her role leading the ACLU of Maine, she launched a challenge as a Democrat to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in the 2014 election. Collins defeated Bellows handily, 68.5%-31.5%.
Bellows ran for the state Senate in 2016 and defeated Republican Bryan Cutchen to win the seat. She was reelected to the seat in 2018 and 2020. She also served as an elector for one of Maine’s two at-large votes in the Electoral College in 2020, voting Joe Biden for president and Kamala Harris for vice president.
In 2020, she was elected by the state legislature as secretary of state, becoming the first woman to hold the office. Maine is one of three states that has its legislature elect its top election official. She was reelected to the office by the legislature in 2022.
During her time in office, Bellows helped launch automatic voter registration at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Maine State Archives’s online catalog portal. Her decision to boot Trump from the ballot marks her most notable action since taking office.
Bellows said her decision was not reached “lightly” and that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which she claims was “at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of” Trump, required her to “act in response.”
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“I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection. The oath I swore to uphold the Constitution comes first above all, and my duty under Maine’s election laws, when presented with a Section 336 challenge, is to ensure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek,” Bellows said on Thursday.
Trump’s campaign had called for Bellows to be disqualified from deciding on his eligibility, accusing her of being a partisan actor and citing her past comments about the Capitol riot.
