I’m not going to lie, I’m getting awfully tired of living in an era of historic firsts.

This time we find ourselves on untrodden grounds of electoral law, now that Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has ruled against Donald Trump’s petition to appear on the Maine Republican Party’s primary ballot.

I’m not an expert in constitutional law (although I carry a concealed copy of it in my purse), but I have a pretty good grasp of risk management and have eyeballs to observe behaviors. Trump has shown complete disregard for playing by the rules, or even a general respect for those rules. From asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win the state, to refusing to return archival papers and documents from his administration, to a whole host of legal violations in between running from the mundane to the outlandish, he simply won’t allow any other person to tell him he can or cannot do something. Since 2016, Mr. Trump has made it quite clear that he won’t accept any outcome other than a total victory for himself.

The only difference is whether or not he can pull the levers of state power.

Trump inspires intense emotion in his followers. Say what you will about President Biden, the man’s got flaws, but I can’t exactly imagine him getting a crowd whipped up enough to storm the Capitol and assault various police officers. And I think we all know that no Republican would be defending the sanctity of primary elections if she had ruled to keep Biden off the primary ballot.

Not that it seems to matter to people, but – as far as I can tell – Bellows is being as cautious, moderate and fair as possible with this ruling. She also suspended her ruling; the courts will rule on the appeals.

A variety of Republican co-workers don’t seem convinced that she’s following the law in good faith as she interprets it. Billy Bob Faulkingham, the state House Republican leader, called her ruling a “sham decision that mimics third-world dictatorships.” I’m not quite sure what part of dictatorship involves giving the opposition a chance to appeal to a higher authority. I guess I’d better reread the history of Stalin’s Russia.

I could write an entire column about the hypocrisy of Republicans worrying that this decision will take away people’s freedom. I’ll save my editors the newsprint, but I’ll remind you that in the year of our Lord 2024, the Maine Republican Party still wants to legally define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. As a woman currently in a relationship with another woman, that seems to me a pretty big overreach of governmental power.

I think Shenna Bellows’ decision was incredibly brave. My first thoughts upon hearing about it didn’t involve questions of electoral law, they were about her personal safety. To be specific, my knee-jerk response was, “Oh, my God, she’s going to get killed.”

Indeed, she was “swatted” – when a fake call is placed with police, usually lying about or making up a violent situation in order to get a heavily armed and aggressive law enforcement response sent to someone’s house. If you’ve heard of “suicide by cop,” swatting is basically “attempted murder by cop.” She’s had her address posted online in various places. She and her staff members have had death threats sent to them. We all know how easy it is to get a gun in Maine. If I was her, I would never have been brave enough to make the decision – even if I thought it was the right thing to do.

Violence is not supposed to have any place in the American political system. Also, on a practical level, threatening Shenna Bellows is an overreaction. In fact, most responses to this ruling are an overreaction; this will be fought all the way up to the Supreme Court. One thing I’ve noticed over the past several years is that the American justice system and the American political system usually have a lot less to do with right and wrong and a lot more to do with power.

As much as I enjoy the intellectual exercise of both sides debating the semantic questions of law – I’m a nerd, and whether Trump needs to be convicted or not before being kept off a ballot is, indeed, a fascinating question – I think the substance of the arguments won’t ultimately matter here.

You want to talk about partisan hacks flexing raw political power? We all know which way the Supreme Court will rule.

Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial

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