AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a Republican effort to launch an impeachment investigation into Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
House members voted 80-60 along party lines against the resolution after a brief debate. 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.
Earlier this month, Rep. John Andrews, R-Paris, filed a resolution to impeach Bellows after she decided to dismiss former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot due to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bellows' decision is under appeal in Maine Superior Court.
Bellows is the first secretary of state in history to block someone from running for president by invoking the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Some legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
So far, Colorado is the only other state to bar Trump from the ballot. That decision by the Colorado Supreme Court is currently under appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, Trump's lawyers asked a judge to pause his appeal of Bellow's decision to allow time for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could render it moot.
Andrews argued that because Bellows served as an elector for President Biden, she could not have been impartial when considering Trump's ballot eligibility. Republicans argued that Bellows' decision disenfranchised the more than 300,000 voters in Maine who chose Trump in the last election.
Bellows has stood by her move since its announcement last week, explaining that the secretary of state under Maine law is required to make a decision when voters challenge a candidate's qualifications.
Bellows also reiterated that her decision lay solely with her duty as the secretary of state and dismissed any underlying motives or biases for the move.
"I did my job under the law and the Constitution," Bellows said last week. "The qualifications under the Constitution of law are not a menu. They're not optional. They're obligations."
Bellows has since received threats and even a hoax emergency call to her home address following the decision. Regardless, she said she will continue to follow Maine state law.
"The threatening communications, the attacks, the swatting, the political theatre over at the state house. ... That's not how we do it here in our country," Bellows said.
Bellows, 48, is Maine’s 50th secretary of state and the first woman to hold the office, beginning in the role in January 2021 after being elected by lawmakers.
The former state senator also served as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine from 2005 to 2013 and worked on successful drives to legalize same-sex marriage, same-day voter registration and ranked choice voting.
While Maine has just four electoral votes, it’s one of two states to split them, so the state could have outsized importance in what's expected to be a close race. Trump earned one of Maine’s electors when he was elected in 2016 and again in 2020 when he lost reelection.