Now that four liberal judges on the Colorado state Supreme Court have declared former President Donald Trump an “insurrectionist” and barred him from that state’s ballot, a local Delaware Valley lawmaker wants Pennsylvania to follow suit.
State Sen. Art Haywood (D-Philadelphia/Montgomery) is demanding Secretary of State Al Schmidt declare Trump ineligible for office on the same grounds.
Colorado’s top court ruled 4-3 that Trump’s behavior during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill violated the 14th Amendment and made him ineligible to serve and, therefore, to appear on the ballot. That argument has been rejected in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court tossed a similar Trump eligibility suit in October.
Haywood portrayed the issue as one of election integrity to The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I have many constituents in my district who ask me, ‘How can a former president who engaged in insurrection be on the ballot?’” he said.
Legal scholars, on the other hand, overwhelmingly expect the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado court’s action.
Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, an outspoken Trump critic, denounced the ruling.
“I strongly oppose Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, but I think that this case is legally wrong and untenable,” Barr told CNN. “And I think this kind of action of stretching the law, taking these hyper-aggressive positions to try to knock Trump out of the race, are counterproductive. They backfire.”
And Barr objected to the court declaring Trump guilty of insurrection without hearing from witnesses, having a cross-examination, allowing the accused to face his accuser, etc.
“I disagree with the court’s ability to make those findings,” he said. “The core problem here is the denial of due process.”
Schmidt, a Republican, felt Trump’s wrath in 2020 while a member of Philadelphia’s elections board. Trump posted on social media that there was “a mountain of corruption & dishonesty” that Schmidt refused to consider regarding Philadelphia and election night. Schmidt ended up testifying before the U.S. House select committee about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, praised Schmidt’s “proven track record of defending our democracy” when he nominated the Republican for secretary of state in January. He also praised Schmidt’s ability to stand “up to extremism — even in the face of grave threat.”
That doesn’t mean Schmidt plans to go along with Haywood’s request to boot Trump from the ballot.
“Pennsylvania’s Election Code does not give me, as secretary of the Commonwealth, the authority to reject a nomination petition on the grounds that a potential candidate does not meet an office’s eligibility criteria,” Schmidt told DVJournal. “In Pennsylvania, that is a question that can be answered only by the courts.”
A spokesperson at the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.
As for Barr’s prediction that blocking Trump from the ballot will help, not hurt, his bid to become the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2024, Republican pollster Frank Luntz agreed.
“You’re actually making it more likely that Donald Trump is elected next November by how you are pursuing this,” said Luntz. “You don’t explain the decisions. You don’t put things in context. And so, Trump climbs and climbs and climbs.”
Luntz added that Trump “thrives on negativity” and that people rally around him the “more that he is prosecuted.”
Even Trump’s GOP opponents have rejected the Colorado court’s actions.
“I don’t believe that it’s good for our country if he’s precluded from the ballot by a court. I think it’s bad for the country if that happens,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said during a Tuesday night town hall in New Hampshire.
“I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court. I think he should be prevented from being the president of the United States by the voters of this country,” Christie added.
At a campaign stop in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) said, “There was no trial on any of this. They basically just said, ‘You can’t be on the ballot’…I think the U.S. Supreme Court is going to reverse that.”
And former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters in Agency, Iowa, “I will beat [Trump] fair and square. We don’t need to have judges making these decisions. We need voters to make these decisions. So, I want to see this in the hands of the voters.”
The Pennsylvania Republican Party decried the Colorado ruling.
“It is a terrible mistake,” state GOP Secretary Elizabeth Preate Havey told DVJournal. “The Democrat Colorado Supreme Court should not take away voters’ rights to vote for who they choose to, especially based upon a charge for which Trump hasn’t even been found guilty in a court of law.
“It’s undemocratic and will lead to tremendous distrust for the judiciary and the political system,” Havey said.
