- No-Name, No-Campaign Candidate Takes Dem Nom In SC-Sen Race
Alvin Greene is an unemployed veteran who has never held political office. After filing for the Democratic primary in the Senate race from South Carolina, his campaign seemed to stop. There is no Alvin Greene web site, no Alvin Greene bumper stickers, no Alvin Greene yard signs. There's not even an Alvin Greene FEC filing.
Nonetheless, Greene won last night's Democratic primary, beating Vic Rawl, a judge who served in the South Carolina legislature for four terms. A judge who had gathered $186,000 for the campaign.
"I wasn't surprised, but not really. I mean, just a little, but not much," Greene told Mother Jones.
Greene, on the other hand, didn't raise a dime. In March, he walked into the state Dem headquarters and handed over a personal check for $10,400, the filing fee to run in the Senate race. The chairwoman, Carol Fowler, was taken aback and told Greene he needed to start a campaign account and write the check from there. A few hours later he came back with a proper check, according to the Free-Times, and filed.
After that, nothing. Fowler says Greene didn't show up at political events, including the convention. Rawl has never seen him.
But somehow, Greene took 59% of the vote last night and will face Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in the fall. There was, by conventional wisdom, little chance Rawl could beat DeMint, who has millions of dollars to spend on a campaign and is popular in South Carolina.
Fowler speculated to the AP that Democratic voters unfamiliar with both Rawl and Greene chose Greene because he appeared first on the ballot.
(LINK)
Then it turned out he's not just an unemployed guy with no political history or campaign living with his parents who beat the party-backed candidate for that district. He has an outstanding felony obscenity charge for showing some nice Southern college girl dirty pictures or something, too! (Reported details are a little hazy). Then two state level Dems met with him and concluded that he was "mentally impaired."
Anyway. Here is pretty comprehensive (if catty and small-minded and sadistic and incurious) WaPo profile of the guy, who -- of course -- caught on with the media bigtime when they found out about the felony charge.
And here's a really painful interview he gave to Olberman:
Like Olberman says, Rep. Clyburn is charging that three non-party-backed Dem. candidates in S.C. were somebody's plants. Here, again, is a little WaPo rundown on the state of play.
But basically, all three candidates are black, none of them appears to have any campaign funds. Two of them (Greene and the somewhat more personally credible surprise winner in the 6th District, Benjamin Frazier, Jr) scored out-of-the-blue upset victories over the party-annointed pick that everyone expected to win the primary. And one of them, who ran against Clyburn himself, lost.
But this to me is the true WTF of the whole thing:
Greene is running for Senate against incumbent Jim Demint, who is, was, and always has been going to win no matter what. It's South Carolina. That seat's simply not open to a Democratic challenger, no matter who he or she is, it's not like if the party's guy (Charleston attorney and ex-state legislator, Vic Rawl, who is an actual politician) had won, the GOP would have had a race on its hands. So why would they plant a plant?
Yet that's sure what Greene (at least) looks like.
I can think of two (or maybe one-and-a-half) hypotheticals:
- (1) It's a prank aimed at punking Obama by some seriously racist but not seriously political group.
(2) It's the Ron-and-Rand-Paul/Tea-Party way of saying "Fuck you" to Clyburn, who's not only the third ranking majority member of the house but also head of the Black Congressional Caucus, in which capacity he was very critical of Rand Paul's remarks on the Civil Rights Act.
I know that the latter seems more likely. But that's really only because I can dream up some way of filling in the details a little. They're both purely speculative, the truth could be either or neither.
Also, fwiw, according to Greene's wiki entry, he got a BA in PoliSci from the University of South Carolina, then served as an intelligence specialist and unit supply specialist with the U.S. Army until last year when he was honorably but involuntarily discharged.
That's special blinking text, denoting "known RI interest area," btw.
Anyway. I have no idea what's going on, but whatever it is, it looks pretty vile. And also like he's being used/controlled/blackmailed/something-ed by somebody. To me and Rep. Clyburn both.
What do you all think? Helter Skelter time or what? Have things really gotten that bad?