Gov. Kathy Hochul weighed in on efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off presidential primary ballots after Colorado’s highest court declared him ineligible to run under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause.
“We’ll see what the Supreme Court does. It’s not something we do, but it’s something I’d watch very closely because that was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” Hochul said Wednesday. "Jan. 6 will live in infamy. Shame on us if we forget that. Shame on us what happened to this country when a Capitol that I used to proudly walk in as a member of Congress was literally under siege, people died, people were injured, and if he doesn’t take responsibility for that, then the American people ought to hold him accountable. So that’s what’s starting in Colorado.”
The Colorado Supreme Court points to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” is forbidden from holding office. The provision was mainly used after the Civil War to keep former Confederates out of government.
Trump’s campaign has called the ruling flawed and that it plans on appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A similar effort is underway in New York as a handful of state senators wrote to the state Board of Elections earlier this month asking Trump be kept off the ballot. Lawsuits in other states have failed until the Colorado ruling.
State Senate Judiciary Chair Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat from Manhattan, co-signed the letter and issued a statement saying the Colorado ruling reinforces their calls for Trump to not be on New York ballots.
“It’s incumbent on states to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and ban Trump from the ballot,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “I hope New York will be next.”