 "Trump's Colorado ballot fight rallies Republicans before key primaries")
Donald Trump’s eligibility to serve again as president faces its strongest legal challenge yet, accelerating a constitutional clash weeks before primary voting begins and triggering Republican politicians’ instincts to rally to his side.
A Colorado Supreme Court ruling barring Trump from the state ballot thrust into the federal courts the question of whether his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to engaging in insurrection, and if that would disqualify him from the presidency.
The battle over how to apply a post-Civil War provision embedded in the 14th Amendment inserts new uncertainty into a 2024 presidential campaign already fraught with unprecedented legal challenges, including Trump’s multiple criminal trials that will slowly advance during an election year.
The immediate fallout has amplified partisan disputes over the Jan. 6 attack and roused prominent Republicans including several of his primary opponents to join Trump in condemning the ruling as an unfair attempt to derail his candidacy.
Even some Trump critics think the ruling should be overturned, including Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor who believes Trump is an insurrectionist but nevertheless calls the decision “crazy.”
“What if it were Texas saying they want Biden to lose and they want to take him off the ballot and the Texas supreme court justices are so conservative that they’ll just do it,” she said. “You’d want the US Supreme Court to step in and stop things like that.”
That reinforces the former president’s grievance-driven campaign narrative at a critical phase of the race. His rivals have just weeks to go before early nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which are their final chances to upset his dominance of the Republican field.
The Colorado ruling ultimately may work to his advantage, earning him attention and sympathy from voters to propel him to win the GOP nomination and the presidency.
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Court Battle
Trump has vowed to appeal, putting the US Supreme Court — whose conservative super-majority consists of three justices appointed by the former president himself — in the position of deciding his fate.
If the ruling stands, the Colorado Republican Party says it would abandon the state-run primary process on March 5 and instead award its 37 delegates through a party-controlled caucus. Caucuses generally have no eligibility rules, allowing any candidate — including Trump — to participate.
“Simply put, we’re not going to allow Democrats — whether they’re sitting judges on the bench or elected — dictate to us who the Republican nominee is going to be,” Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams said in an interview Wednesday.
The federal court battle ahead will be pivotal. If the US Supreme Court allows the Colorado decision to stand, other states could follow — including the crucial battleground states of Michigan and Arizona, where Trump ballot challenges are already pending.
In more than 30 challenges across the country, plaintiffs have argued that Trump should be barred from holding office under the 14th Amendment. It prohibits those who have sworn an oath to protect the Constitution — which Trump did when he was first inaugurated — from serving in office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US.
That question now appears headed to the Supreme Court.
“I think this likely has ruined the holidays for the justices,” said former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. “This court is clearly very conservative and is willing to use its power to assert its vision of the Constitution and the United States, but I don’t think they’re in the bag for Trump.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the party would support Trump’s appeal. “The Republican nominee will be decided by Republican voters, not a partisan state court,” she said.
Assuming Trump seeks Supreme Court review by Jan. 4, the Colorado ruling won’t take effect until the the nation’s highest court resolves the matter one way or another. The state court directed Colorado’s Secretary of State to keep Trump’s name on the presidential primary ballot in the meantime.
The deadline to print the Colorado ballot is Jan. 5. Colorado’s primary is scheduled for March 5, the so-called “Super Tuesday” contest in which more than a third of Republican delegates will be awarded. Colorado itself represents 1.5% of the 2,429 delegates to the party’s July convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Colorado’s GOP party rules require delegates to be selected in a primary, but the national party can waive those rules if it deems the change to be “in the best interests of the Republican Party.”
Party caucuses — in which nominating convention delegates are selected at public meetings instead of by a secret-ballot primary election — tend to favor establishment-backed candidates with strong organization.
Trump Rivals
The ruling once again illustrates the difficulty that Trump’s Republican rivals have had in addressing the former president’s legal problems head-on.
“There was no trial on any of this,” said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “They basically just said, ‘You can’t be on the ballot.’”
“We don’t need to have judges making these decisions,” former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said in Iowa Tuesday night. “We need voters to make these decisions.”
Even Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who has emerged as Trump’s most vocal Republican critic, expressed reservations about the ruling Tuesday.
“What I will say is I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court,” Christie told voters in New Hampshire. “I think he should be prevented from being the president of the United States by the voters of this country.”
It’s that universally strong reaction among Republicans that Trump’s campaign is hoping will galvanize voters to turn out for the former president next month.
“People are going to be looking at this and they’re going to become defiant. They don’t see this as just about Trump,” Colorado Republican’s Williams said. “They see this as government officials trying to take away their choice.”