🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
California's secretary of state has rejected calls to remove Donald Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot, in a boost to his election campaign.
Shirley Weber certified the list of candidates on Thursday night, with Trump, the former president and GOP frontrunner, listed alongside his rivals including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
It comes despite pressure including from Democrat Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who in a December 20 letter urged her to "explore every legal option" to remove the former president from the California ballot.
It also follows Trump's removal from the ballot in Maine based on a constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office.
Newsweek has contacted representatives for Trump by email to comment on this story.
In that ruling Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said: "The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power."
"I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it," she added.
In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump's campaign, responded to Bellow's decision.
"The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden," Cheung said. "We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.
"Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump's name from the ballot. Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power," he added.
Trump was also disqualified from the ballot in Colorado, on December 19, because of the 14th amendment, with the state Supreme Court making the decision over his alleged role in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The decision came after Trump appealed a lower court decision on the case.
However, Trump has received positive news in other states despite efforts to remove him from the ballot. Minnesota's Supreme Court ruled in November that there was "no state statute that prohibits a major political party from placing on the presidential nomination primary ballot ... a candidate who is ineligible to hold office."
The Michigan Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit Wednesday that sought to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot in the state.
With the most primary delegates, losing California could have hurt Trump's chances of securing the nomination
Update 12/29/23 4:27 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include more information.
About the writer
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and ... Read more