Republicans and President Trump on Wednesday thumbed his nose at a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court to strip him from the state’s primary ballot while the shock decision is likely to only widen his sizable lead over his GOP opponents and solidify his edge over President Biden.
The 4-3 ruling by an all-Democrat-appointed bench to block Mr. Trump from the primary ballot is no doubt headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the state GOP wasted no time planning to circumvent the decision on their own.
Colorado Republican officials vowed to cancel the state primary and instead convert to a party-controlled caucus “if this is allowed to stand.”
Some Republicans are threatening to turn the ruling against Democrats and exclude Mr. Biden from red-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.
Most legal experts predicted the high court will throw out 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 Trump of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol to try to overthrow Mr. Biden’s election. But their bid to strip him from the primary ballot in Colorado has flipped the accusation against Democrats who are now attempting to manipulate the outcome of the 2024 election, say critics.
“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.
Democratic leaders, including President Biden, are standing by the decision, which comes amid a string of polls showing Mr. Trump establishing a durable lead over Mr. Biden, including in critical battleground states.
Mr. Biden, when asked about the ruling on Wednesday, said it was up to the Colorado Supreme Court to decide the matter but aligned himself with their 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 following the 2020 presidential election and leading up to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. He faces 13 counts in Georgia and four federal counts from a D.C. grand jury on charges he attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz warned that even if the Supreme Court tosses out the Colorado decision, 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 Wednesday.
Mr. Trump’s GOP primary opponents condemned the decision.
Mr. Trump leads the entire GOP primary field by as much as 30 points in early-voting states.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s top GOP primary opponent, predicted the Supreme Court will reverse the Colorado ruling.
“There was no trial on any of this,” Mr. DeSantis told a crowd in Iowa, where he’s campaigning ahead of the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses. “They basically just said, ‘You can’t be on the ballot.’”
Mr. DeSantis warned while the ruling is unfair, it 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 trail, 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.
There is limited general election polling in Colorado, but the blue-leaning state favored Mr. Biden by 9 points over Mr. Trump in a November poll of likely voters released by the Colorado Polling Institute.
Colorado has not voted Republican in a presidenital election since 2004.
Legal experts predict the Colorado ruling will prompt other states to try to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot.
Before the Colorado decision, lawsuits had been filed in more than a dozen states to block Mr. Trump from the ballot. None have gotten very 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.
On Wednesday, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis said her heavily Democratic state is now “obligated” to determine if Mr. Trump qualifies for the California 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, she wrote, “must stand on the right side of history.”
Republican presidential candidate and biotech tycoon Vivek Ramaswamy is making the ruling against Mr. Trump a Republican campaign issue. He’s calling on all GOP 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 in 2023 and faces 91 criminal counts filed against him at the federal and state level, much of it related to his actions following the 2020 election.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found 58% of voters believe Mr. Trump “committed serious federal crimes,” yet his popularity among Republicans has grown and he’s remained the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin and Marshall College Poll, told The Times 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 aimed at preventing 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.