Shenna Bellows

Shenna Lee Bellows (born March 23, 1975) is an American politician and a non-Profit executive director.

Shenna Bellows was born on March 23, 1975, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the eldest daughter of Dexter Bellows, a carpenter, and Janice Colson, a nurse.

She grew up in Hancock, Maine, where she attended Hancock Grammar School.

Bellows grew up in a struggling family; she claims her family did not have running water or electricity, which the family could not afford, until she was in the fifth grade.

When Bellows was 15, she was an AFS–USA foreign exchange student in Campos, Brazil.

Bellows graduated from Ellsworth High School in 1993.

During high school and college, Bellows worked as a research assistant at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.

During her junior year, she studied for a semester as an exchange student in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Bellows served as executive director of the ACLU of Maine for eight years.

In that role, she built coalitions with both Republicans and Democrats to pass privacy and civil rights laws.

She was a leader of Mainers United for Marriage, working for seven years to pass same-sex marriage in Maine.

From 1997 to 1999 Bellows worked as a researcher and recruiter for Economists Incorporated, a privately held economic consulting firm specializing in microeconomic analysis in antitrust, regulatory and legal contexts in Washington, D.C.

She was a leader on voting rights and co-chaired the 2011 Protect Maine Votes campaign to restore same day voter registration.

Most recently, she organized a successful privacy campaign to require warrants for access to private cell phone communications, and she led the opposition to warrantless drone surveillance.

During her time at the ACLU, Bellows was a leader in the Maine Choice Coalition and the Coalition for Maine Women.

She was recognized for her work to advance women’s health and reproductive choice by awards from the University of Maine Women’s Studies Department, Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, the American Association of University Women, the Frances Perkins Center and the Maine Democratic Party.

Prior to her work at the ACLU of Maine, Bellows was the national field organizer at the ACLU in Washington, D.C., organizing nationwide civil liberties campaigns including opposition to the Patriot Act, where she built broad coalitions that included librarians and gun owners alike.

Bellows was an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Nashville, Tennessee.

There she assisted a start-up non-Profit, Community IMPACT!

in developing an asset building program to promote educational and economic empowerment for young people in Nashville’s largest public housing project.

Bellows served as a small business development Peace Corps volunteer in La Arena de Chitré, Panama.

In Panama, she launched a micro-lending program for artisans, started a Junior Achievement entrepreneurship program at a local high school, and was President of Women In Development/Gender and Development, dedicated to advancing economic and educational opportunity for women and girls.

Bellows launched her candidacy for the United States Senate in 2014 on October 23, 2013.

In November, she was defeated.

Bellows was the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Maine in the 2014 election, and was defeated by incumbent Republican Susan Collins.

In 2016 she won election to the Maine Senate, and she served until resigning in 2020 when she became a candidate in the legislative election for secretary of state.

On December 28, 2023, Bellows ruled that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would be barred from the Maine primary ballot due to his conduct during the January 6 United States Capitol attack, pending an appeal.

In the aftermath of that decision, she was doxxed and swatted, along with several other leading American activists and politicians, during the period of similar incidents nationwide.

Bellows announced on March 4, 2016, that she would run for the Maine Senate in district 14, including her hometown of Manchester and ten other towns in the Augusta area.

She ran as a publicly financed candidate.

Bellows won election to the Maine Senate on November 8, 2016, and took office on December 7, 2016.

She was executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine between 2018 and 2020, and she served as the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maine between 2005 and 2013.

She won reelection to the Maine Senate in 2018, defeating Republican Matt Stone with 57.9% of the vote.

On December 2, 2020, the Maine Legislature elected her to serve as the 50th Maine secretary of state.

She was reelected again in 2020, winning 56% of the vote over Republican Mark Walker.

Bellows resigned from the Senate on December 2, 2020.

A special election was scheduled for March 2021.

In December 2020, Bellows was elected Secretary of State of Maine.

She is the first female to hold the position.

In Maine, the secretary of state is elected biannually in December by a joint session of the Maine Legislature for a term that begins in January.