The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Donald Trump from the state’s ballot will help the former president in his quest to win next year’s Republican nomination, political insiders in both parties say.
Some Democrats fear it could boost him next November, too.
Republican elected officials raced to rally around Trump in the hours after the ruling was released Tuesday — even those not backing him for president in 2024. Sen Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has not endorsed Trump, wrote a bill aimed at preventing states from blocking presidential candidates from their ballots. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is competing with Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, even interpreted the decision as an attempt by Democrats to aid Trump.
“They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election’s going to be all this legal stuff,” DeSantis said in answer to a voter’s question in Urbandale, Iowa, Wednesday morning.
“It’s unfair. They’re abusing power, 100%,” DeSantis said. “But the question is, is that going to work? I think they have a playbook that unfortunately will work, and it will give [President Joe] Biden or the Democrat, whoever, the ability to skate through this thing.”
Already facing criminal charges in four cases at the federal and state levels — with each indictment appearing to cement his political base — Trump has turned his pending prosecutions into a political argument that he and fellow Republicans are being persecuted by in-power Democrats.
The broader question is whether the ruling feeds into Trump’s narrative in a way that is easily absorbed by swing voters should he advance to a general election.
“You know, we talk about democracy, but the whole world is watching the persecution of a political opponent that’s kicking his ass,” Trump argued about Biden during a speech at the University of New Hampshire Saturday.
Biden portrays Trump as a threat to democracy, and deployed that message against Trump acolytes in 2022 before many of those GOP candidates went down in defeat in the midterms. Now, some Democrats close to the president fear that knocking Trump from the ballot will flip that script — or at least blunt Biden’s message.
“They’re pissed,” said a source familiar with discussions involving senior White House and Biden campaign officials. The decision makes it look “like Colorado is attempting election interference through non-elected Democratic-appointed justices with funding from ‘shady left-wing donors,'” the source said.
“We all hope Biden wakes up on Christmas morning to an A3 story in the Delaware News Journal saying that the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of Trump,” the person added.
While the Supreme Court could at any time overturn the state court’s position — that Trump is ineligible under the 14th amendment because his actions on Jan. 6 amounted to insurrection — Trump is reaping immediate political rewards. Shortly after the decision was handed down, he sent out a fundraising pitch.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called the decision “a thinly veiled partisan attack” on Trump.
“Regardless of political affiliation, every citizen registered to vote should not be denied the right to support our former president and the individual who is the leader in every poll of the Republican primary,” said Johnson, who endorsed Trump last month.
One of Trump’s rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy, pledged Tuesday night to withdraw from the Colorado primary ballot if Trump isn’t on it — and called on their opponents to do the same. A Ramaswamy aide, asked how the ruling affects Trump, put it succinctly: “Oh, I’m sure it will help his poll numbers.”
It’s not just Republicans who think the state Supreme Court has handed Trump a gift.
“The optics of the decision before any court has ruled on his indictments just feeds the Trump persecution complex,” Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, a veteran presidential campaign aide, said. “And unfathomable as it may sound to Democrats, [this] will likely strengthen him.”
David Axelrod, who served as a top adviser to President Barack Obama, described Trump’s courtroom travails as “battery packs” on the GOP campaign trail.
Trump already holds wide leads over his Republican presidential rivals in national and state-by-state polling, and, with less than a month before voters caucus in Iowa, the decision promises to rob his opponents of oxygen at a crucial moment for their campaigns.
“Under 30 days to the caucus, time and attention are at a premium,” said Matt Gorman, a former top campaign aide to Sen. Tim Scott, who suspended his presidential effort last month. “Instead of his opponents being able to contrast themselves with Trump, they’re forced to rightly defend him.”
They were quick to respond publicly — and took Trump’s side — demonstrating the political need to avoid angering Republican primary voters who see Trump as the victim of partisanship.
“The last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot,” said former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who vowed that she will “beat him fair and square” anyway.
The one GOP candidate who sounded a different note: former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a vocal Trump critic who has attracted little support from GOP voters.
