At 91, Norma Anderson is well-versed in the U.S. Constitution: as a lawmaker, she has consulted it often during her long career in the Republican Party, and keeps copies in her purse and near her television.
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So on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington to try to prevent the transfer of power to Democrat Joe Biden, she dog-eared the page of the 14th Amendment, which provides for the ineligibility of responsible for acts of “rebellion”.
“That same evening, I reread this part,” she tells AFP by videoconference, from her home in Colorado (west).
This pure conservative, elected for 20 years under the label of the “Grand Old Party”, drew certainty from this.
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“Trump should never be president again, because he violated the constitution and tried to overturn an election,” she believes. “To me, that means our democracy is in danger if he is elected.”
The retiree became the main – and unexpected – plaintiff in a procedure launched by an association, which pushed the Colorado courts to order the removal of Donald Trump from the ballots in the state.
AFP
A decision strongly contested by the ex-president, who is asking the Supreme Court to have it annulled as a matter of urgency, before the Colorado primary organized on March 5 to choose the Republican candidate for the White House.
“Hope”
Scrutinized by other states and potentially explosive, this file was examined at the beginning of February by the highest court in the country, which should decide the question in the coming days or weeks.
During the hearing, the judges appeared skeptical of this unprecedented procedure, based on a provision that had largely been forgotten. Without discouraging Ms. Anderson.
“I am one of those people who always have hope, until they are told no,” smiles the former elected official, the first woman to become leader of Republican elected officials in the Colorado parliament.
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, after the Civil War, to prevent Southern Confederate officials involved in that Civil War from getting elected. The text excludes from the highest public functions anyone who has engaged in acts of “rebellion”, after having taken an oath before the Constitution.
But the debates before the Supreme Court did not venture into the minefield of what constitutes a rebellion or not, nor into the evaluation of the actions of Donald Trump.
The judges mainly focused their questions on formal objections, appearing to want to avoid any accusations of election interference. They particularly insisted on a central obstacle: can Colorado decide alone to disqualify a presidential candidate?
“They shouldn’t worry about that,” Ms. Anderson counters, pointing out that in America, “each state runs elections and approves who is on the ballot.”
“Like Putin”
In addition to Republican and Democratic contenders, independent candidates sometimes run for president in certain states, without being able to compete throughout the country, she recalls.
“What makes a Republican or a Democrat better than an independent candidate?” she asks. “Nothing. We should all be treated equally.”
For Ms. Anderson, the attitude of Donald Trump, who still falsely maintains that the 2020 election was stolen from him and openly speaks of “punishment” in the event of a return to the White House, remains unequivocal.
“Our founding fathers would not be kind to him. They would probably imprison him,” she says. “He likes to be like Putin, or like a king. (…) His behavior proves it, everything he says proves it.”
Since her legal action, Donald Trump’s campaign team has portrayed her as a “RINO”, an infamous acronym designating those who are “Republican in name only”.
Not enough to raise eyebrows for the nonagenarian, elected from Colorado between 1986 and 2006. She says she focuses on “congratulations from strangers from all over the country”, and is sometimes stopped by passers-by for a photo, almost 20 years later his political retirement.
“At the very least, we drew attention to what Donald Trump is,” she says.
