NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – New York Democrats are escalating their efforts to get Donald Trump off of the state's 2024 election ballot after Colorado’s highest court removed the former president from the ballot in that state in a stunning ruling this week.
The Colorado Supreme Court declared Tuesday that Trump is ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the presidential primary ballot.
The 4-3 decision confirmed Trump should be barred for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
"New York is next," state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal wrote on social media in response to the Colorado ruling. The Manhattan senator said he was "elated" by the decision.
Hoylman-Sigal and state Sen. Liz Krueger, of the Upper East Side, wrote a letter this month to the New York State Board of Elections to argue that Trump should be disqualified.
“[I]neligible candidates who have engaged in insurrection in violation of the Constitution are not eligible for candidacy under New York law,” the senators wrote, according to the Daily News. “Donald Trump, as the leader of such an insurrection, should not be listed on New York ballots.”
Additionally, Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, of the Bronx, introduced a bill that would amend the state's election law to reject a candidate's certification for the ballot if the Board of Elections finds they engaged in "insurrection or rebellion against the United States," the Post-Journal reported.
Even if Trump were disqualified from the ballot in New York, it likely wouldn't make a difference in the Electoral College, since the Empire State has been a reliably blue state for decades. Ronald Reagan was the last Republican presidential candidate picked by a majority of voters in 1984.
Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win next year’s presidential election, but the danger for him is that more courts and officials in other states will follow Colorado's lead.
Trump’s attorneys promised to appeal the Colorado decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Colorado officials said they'd remove Trump's name if no action is taken by Jan. 5, which is the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.
Trump’s legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said in a statement: “This ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”
Meanwhile, Trump's opponents in the Republican primary rallied to his defense after the ruling, including some of his harshest critics like Chris Christie, who said, "I don’t think it’s appropriate to take him off the ballot through the courts...I think we have to beat him at the ballot box."
New York Republicans have defended Trump and criticized efforts to remove him from ballots, including Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, of Staten Island, who told Fox Business on Thursday that she "has faith the Supreme Court is going to throw this out."
"What is the party that's the threat to democracy? It's clearly the Democratic Party," Malliotakis said. "They're removing a candidate from the ballot in Colorado over something where there was no charge, no conviction."
Rep. Elise Stefanik, an upstate congresswoman, wrote on social media that Trump was being "viciously erased from the ballot by radical Democrats who seek to steal the election and take away our vote – FIGHT BACK!"
The Associated Press contributed to this report.