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Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (D-CA) has now called for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) to remove Donald Trump from the California primary ballot. If nothing else, a decision to ban Trump would absolutely force the Supreme Court to take up the case, as California has more delegates to the Republican National Convention than any other state. Having those delegates go to any candidate(s) other than Trump would have a huge impact.
Kounalakis said: "California must stand on the right side of history. The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The Constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist."
Weber gets the first call here. If she decides that Trump is ineligible, she will announce that and Trump will sue. Given the time schedule, the case might go directly to the California Supreme Court. There is a bit of a hurry here. The deadline for finalizing the ballot candidates is a week from today, on Dec. 28. If Weber plans to act, she has only a few days to do it. If two state Supreme Courts were to rule that Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot and write-in votes for him are not to be counted, SCOTUS would absolutely be forced to do something. If John Roberts really didn't want to get involved, he and his eight colleagues could rule: "Elections are run by the states. The federal government has no role here." However, that is very unlikely since the issue is the meaning of Sec. 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. What the Constitution actually means is very much a federal issue, no matter how much Roberts would like to toss the hot potato right back at the states.
The problem with this game is that both sides can play it. Texas also has a highly partisan lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick (R), and now he has suggested removing Joe Biden from the Texas ballot. Patrick falsely said that Biden has allowed 8 million undocumented people to cross the border since he was president and somehow that counts as an insurrection. Even in Texas that is not likely to fly. Nice try, Dan. A case could conceivably be made that failure to enforce immigration laws is a dereliction of duty and thus is an impeachable offense, but this has nothing to do with joining an insurrection. As it turns out, you don't have to be a constitutional scholar to get elected to be (lieutenant) governor of Texas. There is a bit of history on that. (V)