Alvin Greene is apparently the Democratic Party nominee for US Senate,
representing the state of South Carolina. He won the nomination apparently without campaigning,
without a web site, and without any of the normal means of generating publicity. If Mr. Greene
should win in the general election (and he almost certainly won't), the people of South Carolina will
be stuck with him.
His unlikely victory had a lot of people wondering right away about what went wrong with the election.
Some suggested an electronic voting machine malfunction, or some sort of dirty trick by the Republicans.
But the more likely explanation is that the Democrats in South Carolina are uninformed and not terribly
bright. Some (or most) of them may have thought they were voting for Al Green, the pop singer
from the early 1970s.
This incident tells us a lot about the voters of South Carolina, and should serve as a lesson
to us all: Don't vote for someone just because you like the way his or her name sounds.
Democrats Are From Pluto.
[Scroll down] "How can a man win an election without spending money?" You can hear the hurt
in their voices, the feeling of betrayal, like someone who stepped out onto his patio only to find himself
at the bottom of a sinkhole. Politics is supposed to be about cash, wads of it, splashing in all
directions, enriching the media and the consultants and the candidates themselves. How can folks be
rallied to a cause without spending on streamers and balloons and flyers and ominous radio ads delivered
in hushed voices? Free votes are an outrage, it seems.
Watchdog
Urges Probe Into Whether Greene Was 'Induced' to Run for Senate. A top government watchdog on
Tuesday [6/15/2010] called on the South Carolina attorney general to probe whether Democratic Senate nominee
Alvin Greene was "induced" to run, as speculation continued to build over how the candidate with no money and
no campaign infrastructure pulled out a victory over a local lawmaker last week.
The Editor says...
Democrats seem so alarmed about this mentally challenged guy winning an election. Aren't these the same
Democrats who are constantly urging everyone else to "hire the handicapped"?
Alvin Greene: The Most Qualified
Democrat I Have Ever Seen. Democrats have decided that Alvin Greene's surprise victory in
the South Carolina Democratic senatorial primary must be the result of a Republican dirty trick. ... Obama
senior adviser David Axelrod said Greene was not a "legitimate" candidate and called his victory "a
mysterious deal." (Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious
funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come
out of nowhere and win an election?)
Conviction wouldn't bar Greene
from representing S.C.. If Alvin Greene is convicted of the felony obscenity charge against
him, he could represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate — but he might not be able to vote for
himself, elections officials said Tuesday. The U.S. Constitution's only requirements to seek federal
office are age, residency and citizenship, Julia Queen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Elections Commission,
said Tuesday [6/15/2010].
Alvin Greene's New
Political Paradigm. The mysterious South Carolina Senate candidate didn't knock on any
doors. He called almost no one. He printed no campaign signs and didn't even put up a
website. But he won 60% of the vote.
Green
light for Alvin Greene's senate run. In what might be the best decision made by politicians in
South Carolina in, well, ever, the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party voted 5 to 1
to reject a call for a new Senate primary. This should have incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint (R) smiling broadly,
but it was the right thing to do.
Greene is S.C.
Democratic Party's nominee in name only. Alvin Greene is the South Carolina Democratic Party's
nominee for the U.S. Senate, but that doesn't mean Democratic Party members actually support his candidacy.
The
Greene Party. The Democratic Senate candidate from South Carolina is not a GOP dirty trick but
an appropriate representative of a party detached from reality. An incoherent and off-the-wall empty
suit, he is a perfect fit.
Misunderstanding
the Problem of Alvin Greene. I think people have been eager bystanders to the Alvin Greene train
wreck, forwarding along the cringe-worthy interviews and quotes, without recognizing the real import of his
victory in South Carolina. ... It's possible that enough protest voters intentionally voted for Greene to
send a message about their distaste for establishment candidates. But the point is that we
don't know. We'll never know. Because there's basically no real-world record of that
South Carolina Democratic primary. It all exists inside the machines.
Democrats Trash
Alvin Greene. As for the rumor campaign that he's somehow a Republican, this is a standard page
out of the old Stalinist playbook: "If you can't suppress your political enemies by any other means short
of shooting them then you make 'em out to be mentally ill," which is what they're trying to do. They're
trying to make this guy [appear to be] mentally ill. "He's a nutcase!" He's a black liberal and
the Democrat Party is out to destroy him. Where are Sharpton and Jackson, here?
A
Greene Victory in South Carolina? In a world in which people often imitate movies, some hapless
voters were actually taken in by the name alone. These same voters admitted to national reporters that
they thought they were voting for the famous gospel singer. To my father's generation, who fought for
the right of minorities to vote, they would have seen this approach as irresponsible or squandering a "sacred
right." Nonetheless, most voters come to primaries fired up and informed about only a handful of races.
Red Flags Suggest Potential E-Voting Issues
In Bizarre South Carolina Election. People using ES&S machines have found that they voted for the
wrong candidate. It's also quite easy for anyone to recalibrate certain ES&S machines, so that it's easier
for people to make mistakes while voting. In South Dakota, ES&S machines added thousands of phantom votes.
And then there's Kentucky, where officials were recently arrested for using the confusing interface of ES&S e-voting
machines to get people to leave the polling place before submitting their votes, so those officials could change
their votes. Oh, and the best part? Most of these ES&S machines have no audit trail. So there's
no way to go back and check what happened.
Greene had
legitimate sources for South Carolina election fees. Alvin Greene, the obscure jobless man
whose come-from-nowhere victory in the June Democratic primary for U.S. Senate created a national furor,
had legitimate sources of income to finance his $10,400 primary entry fee, law enforcement sources said
Friday. [7/9/2010]
Enigmatic Jobless Man Prepares Senate
Campaign. On a blisteringly hot afternoon here, Alvin M. Greene talked in a perfunctory way
about his improbable candidacy for the United States Senate. But his voice intensified with grievance
when the subject turned to his short-circuited career in the Army, from which he was discharged in August
involuntarily.
What is it with Alvin Greene?
A month and a half after Greene's out-of-nowhere victory in the South Carolina Democratic Senate primary, the
media obsession with his unlikely story is becoming as big a mystery as the circumstances surrounding his
curious candidacy. ... There's no other marginal candidate this election cycle drawing such attention.
And there may be no other example in modern political history of a statewide political hopeful with so little
hope of victory, yet so much media attention.
Alvin
Greene Dances to Rap Song; South Carolina Democrats Cringe. Alvin Greene, the unlikely Democratic
Senate candidate from South Carolina, is coming out of his shell. As he is trailed by documentary filmmakers,
reporters and photographers — puzzled by his candidacy but unable to look away — Democratic
officials continue to keep their distance.
Alvin Greene, the documentary.
Last summer at this time, South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene was a veritable nobody.
Today, the unexpected, recently indicted, unemployed candidate for the world's greatest deliberative body is
a news media superstar, despite the bewildered mien ... Greene regularly displays when presented with questions
of political significance such as the implications of "cap and trade" or "Middle East peace."
Alvin
Greene has not filed with FEC. Despite all the media attention to his campaign, Alvin Greene, the
Democratic nominee for Senate in South Carolina, just hasn't been able to raise much — if any —
money for his unlikely quest to defeat GOP Sen. Jim DeMint. In fact, Greene has not filed any disclosure
documents with the Federal Election Committee, presumably because he has not reached the $5,000 threshold in
campaign donations required to report, according to an FEC spokeswoman.
Lawrence O'Donnell Asks
Alvin Greene If He's A Witch. Surreal South Carolina Senate candidate Alvin Greene kept things
pretty quiet for a while, but he broke that relative silence last night [10/11/2010] on The Last Word,
where Lawrence O'Donnell brought him on for a Q&A. Like most everything involving Greene, things got
pretty bonkers extremely quickly.
Alvin Greene crashes WIS broadcast at State
Fairgrounds. Long-shot U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene made a surprise campaign appearance
in Columbia on Wednesday [10/13/2010] at the state fair — right in the middle of a live WIS
News 10 broadcast!
Alvin
Greene explains his strategy for victory in South Carolina. Despite being down 37 percent
in the polls to Republican South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint six days out from the Election Day, Democratic
Senate candidate Alvin Greene remains in high spirits — and is continuing to push his key message:
"DeMint started the recession!"
Editor's note:
The latest report that I saw [11/3/2010] showed Alvin Greene received 359,406 votes, or about
27.69 percent of the total. It is astonishing that almost 360,000 people thought
Alvin Greene could adequately representative them in the U.S. Senate.
Alvin
Greene, Ultimate Warrior. Faster than an incumbent politician, stronger than the Hulk, able to
leap both Michael Jordan and the ballot box in a single leap from logic. Alvin Greene may have lost his
surreal bid for the Senate, but no one, apparently, defeats his alter ego: the "Ultimate Warrior."
Alvin Greene mulls presidential bid.
Greene, the unlikely Democratic Senate nominee in South Carolina who lost overwhelmingly to Republican Sen. Jim
DeMint last week, called the state Democratic Party on Tuesday [11/9/2010] to ask how much it would cost to
run for president.
Alvin Greene: 'Born to be president'.
Former South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Alvin Greene has only the highest hopes for his political
future despite his crushing defeat two weeks ago — he thinks he will be the next president. In an
interview outside a Columbia, S.C. courthouse — where he was being tried for allegedly showing pornographic
material to a college-aged girl — Greene said he would sue the Columbia Free-Times newspaper if he read an
account of the legal proceedings.
Quirky Dem
who lost Senate bid to run for SC house. Alvin Greene, the unemployed Army veteran who
suggested during his failed U.S. Senate bid that making action figures of himself would help create
jobs, is running for office again.
Alvin Greene gets fewer than 40 votes in
South Carolina race. Former Senate candidate Alvin Greene lost his bid for a seat in the
South Carolina legislature on Tuesday [2/15/2011], winning just 1 percent of the vote in a Democratic
primary.
What
Is Going On in South Carolina? Alvin Greene has been accused of being a plant, and, honestly, it's
an accusation that may not be too far from reality. After winning the state's Democratic Senate primary
with over 100,000 votes, becoming the challenger for Republican Jim DeMint, the 32-year-old unemployed veteran
has given interviews and appeared on TV. When asked about his campaign, he does not give answers that
indicate he ran a real one.
New grassroots movement: Alvin Greene for President!
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