OAN’s Sophia Flores
12:25 PM – Friday, December 29, 2023
California’s secretary of state has declined efforts to remove 45th President Donald J. Trump from the presidential primary ballot.
On Thursday, Shirley Weber released the list of candidates who will appear on California’s March 5th presidential primary ballot. Many progressive voters were shocked and bothered to see the former president listed, especially due to calls from the state’s lieutenant governor to remove him.
The lieutenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis (D-Calif.) requested that Trump be removed from the ballot over 14th Amendment concerns. She asked The Golden State officials to look into “every legal option” to remove the former president.
Weber replied to her request in a letter.
The secretary of state said that while she believes the Republican’s actions were “abhorrent” on January 6th, her office does not take removing a candidate from the ballot under Section Three of the 14th Amendment “lightly.”
She ended her letter by stating that she is a steward of “free and fair elections and the democratic process” and must place the “sanctity of these elections above partisan politics.”
However, Weber assured Kounalakis that her office will “continue to assess” options concerning the removal of Trump from the ballot. Any action taken by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding other states’ cases of kicking him off the ballot will determine what will happen to Trump’s political future in California.
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) also surprisingly opposed using the 14th Amendment to remove Trump from the ballot.
“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Newsom said in a statement on Friday. “But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”
Polling data from the 2020 presidential election reported that Biden had received 63% of the vote in the blue state.
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