The media loves a good story, even if it's not true. The story of Alvin Greene, the South Carolina phantom, who won the Democratic senatorial primary in South Carolina, is a great media story -- even if there are several holes in the plot.
In case you have not been following this story, Greene, an unemployed former service man who lives with his parents, managed to win the Democratic primary (garnering more than 100,000 votes,) without doing any campaigning, advertising or media. He had zero money to work with, but somehow managed to come up with the $10,000 filing fee.
Greene has no political experience and the only jobs skills he has are from 13 years in the military. He is also facing a felony charge for showing an underage college student pornography.
Some people are billing this as "Mr. Greene goes to Washington," but this story smells worse than three-day old fish. There is no way you can get elected by sitting on your ass and not spending any money. If it was that easy, hundreds of other people would have done it and billionaires like Meg Whitman wouldn't have spend $80 million to win the California gubernatorial primary.
There have been several theories about how Greene pulled this feat off. South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn is calling Greene a plant who is being secretly directed by hidden powers. The motive is to give incumbent, Sen. Jim DeMint, a pushover opponent. Clyburn is calling for an investigation into alleged election fraud. Additionally, the voting machines used in South Carolina are made by Diebold, the same firm that made the voting machines that turned out mysterious results in Ohio in 2004. The Ohio voter scandal resulted in an unresolved lawsuit and
Mike Connell, a GOP operative who was scheduled to testify in the case, died in a mysterious plane crash. Diebold machine provide electronic voting, with no verifiable paper trail. The company is owned by a major Republican campaign donor.
Hiring a simple African American as a ringer is not new in South Carolina. According to an article in the
Washington Post, Republican operative Rod Shealy was convicted for hiring a black fisherman to run against his sister in her campaign for lieutenant governor. Shealy's goal was to stimulate white voters.
This story has many troubling elements:
- How did an unemployed man come up with $10,000?
- How did Greene win election without campaigning?
- Why did Greene tally more votes than there were voters in certain districts?
And Greene himself is an oddity. He claims to be a college graduate, but can barely string together a coherent sentence. His interviews make Sarah Palin sound like a genius. When asked about his platform, he repeats a series of cliches, like "more jobs" and "better justice,"but offers no concrete solutions or ideas. Some South Carolina politicians have suggested that Greene is a mentally challenged patsy who is being used. Other voters have suggested that Greene won because his name sounded black. His opponent Vic Rawl, a judge and former state legislator, is white.
There are too many unanswered questions here. These are questions which should have been answered by the South Carolina media, who only seemed to start investigating Greene after he won. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the media has been reduced to a shoe-string operation who don't have the time to do investigative stories. The South Carolina Democratic party also has egg on its face for letting things get to this stage. And the GOP, well all we have right now is accusations, although DeMint stands to benefit from running against a straw candidate.
This scandal may blow up in the GOP's face if they are implicated. A
Global Grind columunist says that if it turns out that Greene is a Republican plant, many black voters will stick a fork in the GOP and say they are done.
