AUGUSTA, Maine — Democrats who control the Maine Legislature on Tuesday turned back a Republican effort to impeach the state’s top election official for her decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state ballot over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Maine House voted 80-60 along party lines against an impeachment resolution targeting Shenna Bellows, the first secretary of state in history to block someone from running for president by invoking the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause.
Bellows has called the impeachment effort political theater, and has vowed to abide by any legal ruling on her decision to keep Trump off Maine’s March 5 primary ballot, which is under appeal in Maine Superior Court.
GOP Rep. Michael Soboleski, of Phillips, called the secretary’s action “election interference of the highest order” and a fellow Republican, Rep. James Thorne, of Carmel, said the secretary’s action “does nothing but further divide the political banner between the parties, and indeed the people of the state of Maine.”
But they had faced long odds in seeking retribution against the Democrat.
The proposal called for a panel to investigate Bellows’ actions and report back to the 151-member House for an impeachment vote. If the proposal had moved forward, then there would have been a trial in the 35-member Senate, where Democrats also have a majority.
