Bellows, who was herself a candidate for the spot, previously adopted a wildly unfounded interpretation to try to block President Donald Trump from appearing on the ballot. In comparison, this demand is modest. Yet, the expectation is that Bellows will go from an unrestrained impressionist to a narrow textualist in this ballot controversy.
I was highly critical of Bellows when she moved to remove Trump from the ballot as an absurd interpretation used to pander to the perpetually irate. A judge in Maine quickly stopped her. The Supreme Court later effectively downsized insurrection claims to a matter of trespass.
Ultimately, all of these challenges, including the ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, were rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court.
Bellows then ran for governor and later the Senate after Platner’s implosion by parading her unconstitutional action as a qualification. Presumably, Bellows will recuse herself given her effort to get the nod from the party to replace Platner.
Rep. White is arguing that, while Maine does not have a “sore loser” provision barring successive appearances on ballots after losing a primary, the state law implicitly created such a barrier for Jackson.
In the letter below, White argues that “The vacancy process exists to fill an unexpected vacancy, not to provide a second opportunity for a candidate who already sought and lost another office during the same election process.”
He is relying on Title 21-A, which bars a person from filing as a candidate for more than one office at any election. Since another provision limits the party committee to filing a vacancy with a “qualified person,” he is arguing that the law constructively bars Jackson.
It is unlikely that White will prevail in the challenge, but Bellows will have to adopt a distinctly more narrow approach to such challenges than she did to bar Trump from the ballot.
In the earlier controversy, Bellows bases her unprecedented action on the conclusion that the riot on January 6th was an actual “insurrection.” Even after losing repeatedly in that interpretation, she continued to maintain the fiction.
The effort to remove Jackson would seem almost trivial in comparison to Bellows’ earlier effort to remove Trump.
Here is the letter:
