Middlebury grad loses Maine governor's race

By Ted Cohen

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Maine’s embattled secretary of state was trounced Friday in the state's Democrat gubernatorial primary election.

Shenna Bellows, who graduated from Middlebury College, finished fourth in a multi-candidate runoff.

She was the second candidate eliminated in ranked-choice voting tabulation.

The primary was won by Hannah Pingree, whose mother is a 17-year congresswoman representing southern Maine.

Bellows graduated from Middlebury in 1997 with a bachelor of arts degree.

The former Maine state senator’s tenure as secretary of state has been mired in multiple controversies.

Bellows oversaw the embarrassing rollout of flawed new license plates that had graphic defects.

She also triggered a prolonged, ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to keep Republican Donald Trump off the state’s 2024 presidential ballot.

Bellows claimed Trump was ineligible due to his conduct as a first-term president during the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack.

Trump appealed to Maine Superior Court, which ordered Bellows to reconsider her disqualification decision pending a ruling from the United States Supreme Court on Trump's ballot access.

Bellows unsuccessfully appealed the Superior Court ruling to the Maine Supreme Court, where her request was dismissed.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld Trump in a unanimous ruling.

Bellows was also enmeshed in a pre-election scandal when a box of absentee ballots mysteriously were delivered in an Amazon box to the house of a northern Maine resident.

For Bellows, the gubernatorial loss Friday was her second consecutive failed statewide election, having lost a 2014 U.S. Senate bid to GOP incumbent Susan Collins by 40 points.