Trump will be on California’s March ballot. Democrats had urged election official to leave him off

Despite setbacks in Colorado and Maine, former President Donald Trump will appear on California’s primary ballot in his bid to reclaim the White House.

The Republican frontrunner was included on the certified list of candidates released late Thursday by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

Weber faced political pressure to reject Trump’s candidacy, including from Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat who urged her in a Dec. 20 letter to “explore every legal option” to remove the former president from the California ballot. Weber later responded that she was guided by “the rule of law,” and indicated the proper venue to resolve ballot challenges was in the courts.

California has the largest trove of delegates in the 2024 presidential contest with 169. Weber’s decision, which was due Thursday to allow county election officials time to prepare ballots, will likely bolster Trump’s chances for a rematch with President Joe Biden come November.

Unlike all other races in California’s primary where the top two vote-getters from any party have the chance to win in November — a system unique to California, Nebraska and Washington state — the presidential primary consists of separate contests for each party. That also means that voters not registered as Republicans, including those who register with “No Party Preference” aren’t allowed to cast ballots for or against Trump in the field of nine hopefuls.

In California’s GOP primary, Trump will face off against rivals including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former South Carolina governor and Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley — as well as others. In polling tracked by RealClearPolling.com, Trump is eclipsing all other Republican candidates by 50 percentage points or more.

While Weber’s decision keeps Trump on the March primary ballot in California, the former president still faces long odds in one of the deepest blue states in the country. Biden handily beat Trump by more than 5 million votes in California’s 2020 general election.

Weber’s announcement Thursday came just hours after Maine’s Democratic secretary of state removed Trump from the ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to return to the White House.

The decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows followed a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows’ decision to Maine’s state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case. In the end, the nation’s highest court will likely have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and in the other states.

The move came one day after Michigan’s Supreme Court backed an appellate court’s decision that political parties there should be able to determine which candidates were eligible for the primary. Another court decision is expected in Oregon in the coming days after that state’s election’s chief said she lacked the legal authority to remove Trump from a primary decided by party members.

Legal experts said that Thursday’s ruling in Maine demonstrates the need for the nation’s highest court, which has never ruled on Section 3, to clarify what states can do.

“It is clear that these decisions are going to keep popping up, and inconsistent decisions reached (like the many states keeping Trump on the ballot over challenges) until there is final and decisive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, wrote in response to the Maine decision. “It seems a certainty that SCOTUS will have to address the merits sooner or later.”

The timing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is unclear, but both sides want it to come quickly. Colorado’s Republican Party appealed the Colorado high court decision on Wednesday, urging an expedited schedule, and Trump is also expected to file an appeal within the week. The petitioners in the Colorado case on Thursday urged the nation’s highest court to adopt an even faster schedule so it could rule before March 5, known as Super Tuesday, when 16 states, including Colorado and Maine, are scheduled to vote in the Republican presidential nominating process.

California’s Kounalakis praised the Colorado Supreme Court’s Anderson v. Griswold ruling a week ago, saying that “California must stand on the right side of history.”

“California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in Anderson,” said Kounalakis, a candidate to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2026. “The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The Constitution is clear: You must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist.” she wrote.

Kounalakis said that while there will be “inevitable political punditry” about the court’s decision, “this is not a matter of political gamesmanship.”

Newsom himself took a different tack, saying that while there was no doubt that Trump is a threat to American liberties and democracy, “in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”

The high court needs to formally accept the case first, but legal experts consider that a certainty. The Section 3 cases seem tailor-made for the Supreme Court, addressing an area of U.S. governance where there’s scant judicial guidance.

The clause was added in 1868 to keep defeated Confederates from returning to their former positions of power in local and federal government. It prohibits anyone who broke an oath to support the Constitution from holding office. The provision was used to bar a wide range of ex-Confederates from positions ranging from local sheriff to Congress, but it fell into disuse after an 1872 congressional amnesty for most former Confederates.

Legal historians believe the only time the provision was used in the 20th century was in 1919, when it was cited to deny a House seat to a socialist who had opposed U.S. involvement in World War I. But since the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, it has been revived.

Last year, it was cited by a court to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. One liberal group tried to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the 2022 ballot under the provision, but Cawthorn lost his primary, so his case was thrown out, and a judge ruled for Greene.

The Associated Press and The Bee Capitol Bureau’s Andrew Sheeler contributed to this story.