(TNS) — U.S. Sen. John Fetterman is no fan of former President Donald Trump, but he does not appreciate the efforts to keep leading Republican presidential contender off state ballots in 2024.
In fact, Fetterman told the Daily Beast that the attempts to keep Trump off ballots will do more harm to Democrats than good.
“I just want to just go on the record to say how incredibly unhelpful it is to have other states removing him from the ballot,” Fetterman told the website for a column published Thursday.
“All of that is a gift to Trump,” he said, “and all it does is just make him more popular and strong. That’s just going to energize his base. It’s just not helpful.”
The Daily Beast noted that few Democratic politicians have made similar warnings about the efforts, such as the ones that removed Trump from ballots in Colorado and Maine.
Trump’s removal in Colorado by that state’s Supreme Court was based on a lawsuit arguing that he was ineligible to be on the ballot under a clause in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment that prohibits those who engage in insurrection from serving in public office.
Up in Maine, though, that state’s secretary of state, a Democrat, simply removed Trump by citing the same 14th Amendment clause.
Trump has appealed the Colorado decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Maine decision to state court.
Democratic activist Gene Stilp, a Dauphin County resident, filed a federal lawsuit in September to try and have Trump removed from Pennsylvania’s ballots, but he withdrew it last month before filing a similar lawsuit to have U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a York County Republican, kept off the ballot.
KYW-TV in Philadelphia reported that Stilp plans on refiling his lawsuit on Trump in state court.
The station also reported on Jan. 4 that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said that the state’s election code does not give him the authority to reject a candidate’s nominating petition based on their eligibility.
“In Pennsylvania, that is a question that can be answered only by the courts,” he told the station.
