President Trump and other Republicans thumbed their noses Wednesday at a Colorado Supreme Court ruling to strip his name from the state’s primary ballot, and the stunning decision is likely to widen his sizable lead over his Republican opponents and solidify his edge over President Biden.
The 4-3 ruling by an all-Democratic-appointed bench to block Mr. Trump from the primary ballot is undoubtedly headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The state Republican Party wasted no time planning to circumvent the decision.
Colorado Republican officials vowed to cancel the state primary and convert to party-controlled caucuses “if this is allowed to stand.”
Some Republicans are threatening to turn the ruling against Democrats and exclude Mr. Biden from conservative state ballots over his handling of the illegal immigration crisis at the southern border.
“Maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8 million people to cross the border since he’s been president,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on Fox News.
Legal experts predicted that the Supreme Court would overturn the Colorado ruling, which is based on a novel theory that Mr. Trump should be dropped from the ballot under a provision in the 14th Amendment that bars elected officials who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol to try to overthrow Mr. Biden’s election. Their bid to strip his name from the primary ballot in Colorado has flipped the accusation with criticism that Democrats are attempting to manipulate the outcome of the 2024 election.
“It destroys their ‘defenders of democracy’ argument when you have radical, unelected, partisan judges taking away voters’ right to choose their president,” veteran pollster Jim McLaughlin, who has conducted polls for Mr. Trump, told The Washington Times.
Mr. Biden and other Democratic leaders are standing by the decision as a string of polls shows Mr. Trump establishing a durable lead over the president, including in critical battleground states.
Asked about the ruling Wednesday, Mr. Biden said it was a matter for the Colorado Supreme Court, but he aligned himself with the decision. Mr. Trump, he said, “certainly supported an insurrection.”
The former president has not been charged with inciting an insurrection in either of the two criminal cases over his conduct after the 2020 presidential election and leading up to the Capitol riot. He faces 13 counts in Georgia and four federal counts from a District of Columbia grand jury on charges he attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz said even if the Supreme Court overturns the Colorado ruling, Republicans will strike back “in a tit-for-tat manner” against Democrats ahead of the 2024 election. He said the ruling damaged American democracy and violated the Constitution.
“And the American people will pay the price — as the country inevitably becomes more bitter, distrustful and divided,” Mr. Dershowitz wrote in his newsletter.
Mr. Trump’s Republican primary opponents condemned the Colorado court’s decision.
Mr. Trump leads the entire Republican primary field by as much as 30 percentage points in early-voting states.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s primary opponent, predicted that the Supreme Court would reverse the Colorado ruling.
There was no trial on any of this,” Mr. DeSantis told a crowd in Iowa, where he was campaigning ahead of the Jan. 15 state caucuses. “They basically just said, ‘You can’t be on the ballot.’”
Mr. DeSantis said the ruling is unfair and could help Mr. Biden “skate through this thing.”
Mr. DeSantis said he would be the best Republican candidate on the November ballot because he does not carry Mr. Trump’s legal baggage.
“Do we want to have 2024 to be about ‘this trial, that case, this case,’ having to put hundreds of millions of dollars into legal stuff, or do we want 2024 to be about your issues, about the country’s future with a nominee that’s going to be able to prosecute that case against the left?” Mr. DeSantis asked the crowd.
Colorado has limited general election polling, but the liberal-leaning state favored Mr. Biden by 9 percentage points over Mr. Trump in a November poll of likely voters released by the Colorado Polling Institute.
Colorado has not voted Republican in a presidential election since 2004.
Legal experts predict the Colorado ruling will encourage other states to try to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot.
Lawsuits have been filed in more than a dozen states to block Mr. Trump from the ballot, but none has gone far.
Courts in Michigan, Florida, Minnesota and New Hampshire have rejected lawsuits to keep Mr. Trump off the 2024 ballot. Some of those decisions are facing appeals or additional legal action.
California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis said her heavily Democratic state is now “obligated” to determine whether Mr. Trump qualifies for the state ballot.
“The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state,” Ms. Kounalakis wrote to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
California “must stand on the right side of history,” she said.
Presidential candidate and biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is making the Colorado ruling a Republican campaign issue. He is calling on all Republican candidates to pledge to withdraw from the Colorado primary until Mr. Trump is cleared to appear on the ballot “or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver, which will have disastrous consequences for our country.”
Mr. Trump has been indicted four times this year and faces 91 criminal counts filed at the federal and state levels, many of them related to his actions after the 2020 election.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found that 58% of voters believe Mr. Trump “committed serious federal crimes,” yet his popularity among Republicans has grown and he has remained the prohibitive favorite to win the party’s presidential nomination.
Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, told The Times that the ruling in Colorado probably won’t threaten Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination but could sour critical voters in November.
“The longer-term impact is likely to make his general election campaign a bit more difficult as polling suggests the accretion of these charges negatively affects his standing among the independent voters who will ultimately decide the election,” Mr. Yost said.
Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, which defends constitutionalist judges, said the Colorado ruling amounted to more Democratic lawfare to prevent a politically weakened Mr. Biden from facing Mr. Trump on the November ballot.
He predicted it would propel Mr. Trump back to the White House.
“The Democrats have once again overplayed their hand by having four radical state judges disenfranchise over a million Colorado voters by kicking Trump off the ballot,” he told The Times.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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