Talk Elections

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/06/09/south_carolina_democrats_try_to_push_nominee_out.html

Maybe Obama can offer him a government job, to "solve" this little matter. He seems to have had considerable practice at this endeavor, and he tells us it is all legal, so why not? Just why this dude would exit for free escapes me.

Why bother? It's not a competitive seat.

One can always hope. :)

Who knows?  Maybe they hope someone will dig up a DeMint/Haley tryst? 0:)

I will say that from reading some of Greene's statements, he seems to be insane.

But he's so well spoken...
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/meet-south-carolina-senate-shocker-10870806

California Republicans nominated a total nobody for Insurance Commisioner.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/opinionshop/detail?&entry_id=65427

I'd vote for him

Where did he get the $10k to run, but then not campaign at all, as he still lives with his parents and is unemployed?

WOW. What a weird video. And yet, some might like a man of few words like that. :P

Why does the DSSC care about this, again?

Why is Menendez waisting press time pushing people out of a South Carolina race?  

And, it should be said, Greene's win here has nothing to do with his race.  The turnout maps don't reflect that, and the fact that Greene didn't campaign whatsoever, and no one knew who we was, should certainly affect that.  Hell, there's a billionaire self-funder running in the Florida Democratic primary, who is Jewish, with the last name Greene.

He won the primary by a greater amount than Obama beat Mccain in 2008 nationally.  If the choice of the national or statewide Democrats can't run over 40% in the Democratic primary, it's time to move on.  I don't see why it's even worth printing a few pieces of paper, at 1 cent each, for the national Democratic party.   DeMint is going to be DeMint, and focus his attention nationally, no matter who you run.  

No idea. Pipe dream that this odd occurrence could lead to a better candidate/a better shot in the fall?

That's all I've got, and it ain't much. It's still Safe GOP.

Probably less of a pipe dream, and more of a desire for a squeaky clean candidate who may not draw negative national press attention for an ongoing investigation or whatever that thing is that Greene's got.

Also, surely is somewhat of an obligation of the national party to the local party which is solidly behind the other candidate.

Imo, the best solution for the DSCC would have been to ignore the results entirely, and if they generated coverage, THEN push for him to withdrawal.

I still can't get over this. My friend, who worked for the Rawl campaign, is still in shock today.

How much work did the Rawl campaign do?  Did they get the endorsement of every county party, travel the state and put 50k miles on their truck, etc?

Or did they take their primary as a given, and hoard money, and wait until the general, when they could actually start taking more conservative positions?

Obviously you wouldn't want to begin your campaign in South Carolina with a bunch of progressive debates to give your nobody opponent name recog, but still, you have to do SOMETHING...

I really have no idea. He held a lot of events throughout the state and was connected via Facebook, his website and Twitter (my friend was in charge of his FB page). He didn't raise that much money though. He had about $186,000 to DeMint's $3.5 million. I never saw a TV commercial from him, but I did see car stickers and radio ads.

Granted, I live in Charleston and he lived here, and his main support base was here (he won only Charleston a few scattered counties), so maybe he just neglected the rest of the state.

Too bad his last name isn't Anderson so he'd be in front of DeMint, too.


How apocalyptic would it be if Rand Paul and Sharron Angle wouldn't the craziest United States Senator?  And Tom Coburn would fall out of the Top 5?

I know in Massachusetts, veterans are able to have their veteran status listed on the ballot. Is that the case in South Carolina? Because if so, it's way easier to understand how a nobody could win a primary filled with (let's face it) two nobodies.

If so, that's beyond stupid.

Voters just didn't have information and the Parties simply do not have the resources to let enough people know - and in some cases it would be against their own by-laws even if they could.

In TN-08 in 2006 we did have that exact circumstance occur.  We had a candidate from Tipton County - Rory Bricco -, who was campaigning at events all around the district and trying to actually make a race of it.  He was defeated in the primary by a guy who lives outside the district and who did not campaign at all.  Why?   Because the winner's name was "John Farmer" which sounded more wholesome than Rory Bricco, who actually was a farmer.

Also in 2006 the Tennessee Republican Party had recruited State Senator Jim Bryson to be a sacrificial lamb against Bredesen for Governor -- which was kinda sad since Bryson is a truly good man and a loss for our legislature.  However, Tennessee's ballot access laws are very loose and at least four or five other candidates also filed.  There were no ads, mail, or anything but word of mouth during the primary but somehow Bryson still won and only lost a few counties.

In 2008 for one of the judicial elections I voted in the first round just for the candidate whose name most sounded like a stripper's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUFN7ZkjgkA

I'd pay good money to see a debate between this man and Sarah Palin.

Why is it interesting who the Democrats nominates against DeMint?

It isn't like "Simple Jack" there will break 45% anyway.

It's interesting because there are rumors of an IE direct mail boost for Greene annd he's unemplloyed and qualified for a public defender, which in SC requires that you show proof that you live in poverty, how did he get ten thousand dollarrs??!

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/06/10/clyburn_says_greene_was_a_plant.html (http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/06/10/clyburn_says_greene_was_a_plant.html)

Clyburn is calling for an investigation into weather or not Greene is a Republican plant (given South Carolina's "interesting" history with dirty tricks I wouldn't be remotely surprised if this ends up being the case).

Hilarious. SCDems might as well curl up and die.

lol at the whole situation...

I'm not sure why SC Republicans would spend any time attempting to do such a thing. But I stopped trying to understand South Carolina's Republican establishment a long time ago.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,
Which is the most pathetic state party of them all?
The NY GOP holds that title, I say
But the SC Dems come closer with each passing day

Very Nice.

I'm listening to him being interviewed right now, it is truly pitiful.

If he wasn't black the SC Dem party wouldn't care.

They wouldn't care about having a nominee who doesn't seem to have even a basic understanding of what free and fair trade are (let alone a position on them)?

More fun:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/10/sc-sen_democrat_alvin_greene_rambles_on_during_appearance_on_fox.html

I think they may be just a tad more worried about him not having any money, any experience, being a convicted felon, having a murky military record, and not knowing a great deal about policy.

Actually, there were three similar black candidates, another unknown who beat the party favorite in a Congressional race as well.

Some GOP operatives are interestingly accusing him of being a Democratic plant.  The reasoning: if you're unopposed in your primary, you don't appear on the ballot in South Carolina.  Obviously you want name recognition...

But it seems like he was very much an illegal plant of some kind.  If the rumors of a third-party direct mail effort targeting black voters are true, then the above ballot theory wouldn't make sense (unless GOP operatives were trying to take advantage of the ballot scheme done by Dem operatives?).

Can some Democratic donor hire this guy to be a doorguard or something, so he has a job besides being a giant FEC target?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DLestzGLYw

I should add: I don't believe that's even illegal, if phrased correctly.  It can't be quid pro quo, but someone is able to say "Hey, the whole world is crashing down on you, I heard your story, you seem like an honorable man fallen on bad times and I don't believe the rumors about you, I need someone of your background to administrate my property, so you're free to call me up if you end up withdrawing from this busy Senate campaign you're about to wage, or afterwards should you end up not being successful."

Of all the "job offers" for the White House to give...

All of these interviews with Greene are just too painful to watch (most recent one: Olbermann). Yeesh...

cross-posted:

Oh wow, I need to see that.

I'm 20 seconds in, and I'm already feeling pained.  It's like beyond Schadenfreude and more like pity.  I'm starting to feel bad for Greene.

http://www.therightscoop.com/disaster-keith-olbermann-interviews-alvin-greene

If this were a competitive seat, I'd feel less pity.  Maybe this is what Jm felt like watching Sarah Palin on Katie Couric, only a monosyllabic  version of Sarah though.

edit: it gets worse.  Olbermann sounds like a special-ed teacher.  This man needs to withdrawal now, to save himself.  


edit: yowzers.  I don't know how many more of these videos I can take.   It's worse than watching a car accident in slow motion.  He's clearly not able to conduct interviews in even the most remote of fashion.  

srsly, the 'plant' explanation is looking more and more likely.

DAYUMMMM.  They could have at least put a soundtrack in the background to cover up all the dead air.

Anyone else think he probably suffers from social anxiety of some sort? He doesn't really even know how to interact with people, it seems. Poor fellow.

Echoes my feeling.  I'm going to have to stop watching these interviews if he keeps doing them for the next six months.   

He's either a sufferer of social anxiety or a bad actor.  Either way, not a good politician...

That appearance on Olbermann was pretty good though...Did anyone hear the person in the background yelling talking points?

YES! At one point, it clearly sounds like someone is telling him to say something. During the break later on, Olbermann said Greene's lawyer was just out of camera range, possibly feeding him answers.

Is there a worse political sh**thole than South Carolina? I'd never want to live in a place so full of nastiness.

If that was his lawyer, it would be especially odd. I don't think a public defender would be available for their client's media appearances.

In Lancaster County, Rawl won absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points.

In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.

“In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast,” Ludwig said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38433.html#ixzz0qZXV3RTm

Apparently mayor Daley's ghost retired at South Carolina.

Is Alvin Greene the real life JSojournor?

Oh, obviously this was a rigged event.  It's just that everyone sees the baked potato and don't know if it was microwaved, baked, or something else.

Damn, am I hungry?  I think I am.

Also, is this guy the new Rand Paul?  keep this stuff in a thread guys.

What jerk removed my thread?

I didn't remove your thread, I just merged it with this one.

I don't want 50 SC Dem threads dominating this forum, as with 50 Rand Paul threads a couple of weeks ago.

King's is the next to go here.

Is this all a function of uber low information primary day voters? I mean the suggestion that there was massive ballot tampering in SC just doesn't seem very believable.

The Republican plant theory gains steam in Lunar's mind...



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061004943.html


"The intrigue surrounding this week's Democratic primary contests in South Carolina intensified Friday as campaign finance reports linked Gregory A. Brown, the challenger who lost to House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, to a Republican consulting firm."


Besides, the SC GOP is famously sneaky

So a bunch of Republican like AHDuke voted for the guy? :)  I mean just because you are a GOP plant, does not mean you win a Dem nomination for a statewide office. But hey, if it works in SC, maybe it should be tried in my state. :P

Well, the primary probably even had even lower turnout because in SC, Democrats can request Republican primary ballots, and there was a lot of excitement in the GOP primary.  

I guess, despite my skepticism over the "Greene" name, "Alvin Greene" is quite more "black-sounding" than "Vic Rawl"

But there are still those rumors I heard about an independent direct-mail effort targeting voters on Greene's behalf.

And, I said this earlier, but I'll repeat it for you.  Greene qualified for a public defender when he was charged with his felony a few months ago.  Someone in South Carolina with $10,000 in the bank, would not be eligible for a public defender.  Greene has been unemployed since he was involuntarily discharged from the military nine months ago, and has had no source of revenue.  He showed up with a $10k check to register for the ballot.  Even if he had the money stored away in a separate account, that's still a huge amount of money to spend on a race you raise $0 for, and go to 0 campaign events for, and produce 0 campaign literature for.   

Put two and two together, and there's NO CHANCE that something sneaky didn't happen here.

The end.

No, no, my point was that the race was even more low-turnout because informed voters would want to vote in the GOP primary. 

So you agree it was a low information primary day voter thing that was the explanation of the chap getting so many votes (as a percentage since you are saying few voted in the Dem primary relatively speaking) on that day?  How he got on the ballot is another matter.

That's probably one of the largest contributing factors.

But, since he showed up with that $10k check to get on the ballot of money that was not his own, and another no-name African-American beat the SC Democratic Party's choice in a congressional race as well, all bets are off on what other kinds of shady things were done here.  

Well, perhaps you will indulge me Lunar, and speculate for me about what mischief might be at least somewhat plausible and doable. I mean we don't want to be viewed as some sort of conspiracy kook now do we?  Thanks. :)

Massive ballot tampering is ridiculous conspiracy nonsense.

The SC GOP planting candidates is much more believable, but alas, not illegal without more information than what we've got.  Amusing that Dem primary voters fell for it, but this is certainly not without precedent in either party in many states.

 In general Greene performed stronger in the black dominated areas than his statewide average (or where blacks would dominate the Dem primaries), but there were a couple of oddities, and he still performed decently in the white areas outside the coast (Horry was a little strange, but whatever)

The $10,000 that Greene spent may have been illegal.  Obviously for a federal race, the maximum contribution is a notch about $2k.

Torie, I'm not saying they rigged the counting.  At worst, the shady things involved independent expenditures to target black voters.   Which may be illegal campaign expenditures, depending on the source of the money.

Well for a mere $10,000, someone got a lot of bang for their buck, per voter and otherwise. I am not sure there is any there, there. It may be, that nobody cared, sort of like voting for party committee person. I never know who the heck they are, or care. So, the guy was the first name on the ballot, and that was that. Or maybe, it was just racial fealty, if the other dude was white.

All the "may be" reasons you're saying why this "may be illegal" is why I'm saying - "not illegal without further information than what we've got."

Become a lawyer - it helps with the thought process.  :)

I don't want to become a lawyer, I'd rather struggle for my money.


Aye, the other dude was not only white, but his name was "Vic Rawl" as I said above.

Obviously $10k is childsplay in politics.  

But to summarize:

Greene's ballot money: Almost certainly illegal, and 100% not his own

Greene's GOTV operation: If it existed, possibly illegal, and 100% on behalf of the GOP.  All I heard are rumors, the SC Dems better be scouring those counties looking for literature drops and that sort of thing.  I'm sure we'll find out soon enough whether those rumors of direct mail pieces turn out to be true, I'm 50/50 on them myself.

Honestly, interfering in the other side's primary is done all the time.  Hell, I may have done it.  But there is a big difference between legal and illegal.    

Seek help.


Moving right along, what is illegal about AHDuke (as it were) sending out a mailer for Greene with his own money?

Haha.  Just a joke.  I'm not a fan of the struggle.  If someone told me the winning lottery numbers I'd do that and retire. 

Yes, that is more like the sybaritic Lunar, I know and love. I was worried for a moment!

Of course. 

But show me the federal statute that says said action is illegal.  What are the elements?  What is the standard of proof?  What are the parties who can be implicated in such actions and what are the circumstances that catches them within the meaning of the statute?  Build me a case, because otherwise accusations of illegality are baseless.

Oh and btw, lawyers struggle for their money.  Anyone who actually works and take responsibility struggles for the money which is why folks around here have such a positive view of government jobs.

I'm not an expert on campaign finance law, and Citizens United may have changed this, but my understanding is that Independent Expenditure efforts need to properly file as an IE organizations and follow federal rules when they play in federal races.  Look at Harry Reid's group, the one that ran anti-Lowden ads, as an example of this,.

I'm not going to build you a legal case here, as I'm not qualified to do so, all I can do is use my experience and background to make conjectures, which I freely do as we know.  I've built a fairly solid [non-lawyer] case that Greene either lied to the courts when he proved he qualified for a public defender a couple months ago, or that his filing to get ballot access was funded by an illegal campaign contribution -- as for such a filing to be legal, it would need five separate $2,300 contributions for the "Al Greene for Senate" organization to legally possess the $10,400 he spent for ballot access.  As he insists that the $10,400 which he spent was entirely his own money, and all the evidence says that he could not have possessed that money legitimately, and his own actions of not campaigning after spending that sum, there's a fairly strong case of something illegal going on here.  

And, it should be said, there's still a serious possibility that a Democratic operative could be behind this.  As I said earlier, you don't appear on the ballot unless you have an opponent, so for any challenger, there's a serious incentive to have a challenger to build name recognition.  

This whole situation is beyond bizarre. Even if this guy is a Republican plant (which I would not be surprised to learn is true), all it really means is that DeMint will win by 35 points now instead of 25 points. Is he that paranoid about winning re-election that he would orchestrate something like this?

I really doubt that DeMint himself is behind this, obviously for him to orchestrate picking his opponent (Like Reid did, but legally through an IE effort) is far more risky than it's worth not orchestrating that, and DeMint is a fairly smart guy, politically.

As similar cases to Greene's happened in some Congressional races, it was probably just a generic SC GOP operative screwing things around.  Why?  It's election year, there's money available, and somebody thought they'd play around with it.  

I mean...why do you think DeMint has $4 million buckaroos in the bank?  Because thousands of donors though that they would make a difference in a competitive race?  No, political operatives act like political operatives no matter where they are, and if there's no reason to screw around with things, they will do so anyway, especially the South Carolina GOP, probably the shadiest political organization this side of North Korea.

I just composed quite a long post, about my thoughts of being a lawyer, the ups and downs, the stresses, the responsibility, the demands on yourself, if you demand of yourself a very high quality of performance (and that is the key really), the periods of time when you work almost every waking moment (sometimes for months on end) struggling with tough, close, complex issues, which involve judgment calls on which very large amounts of money can be riding, the sometimes hideous complex financial formulas one must get just right, on which large amounts of money may be at stake, forcing clients to think about contingencies that they think will never happen (hey we will all just get along, we are friends), and paying me thousands to draft the legal mechanics to deal with such contingencies that they think will never happen, disciplining clients to get over their emotions and anger, or greed, or impulse to dishonesty, or hiding the ball in some transactional deal, where the hiding ultimately may win them the battle but lose the war (I sometimes have to give almost therapeutic lectures about that), and having the moxie to do it without fear,  and with self confidence, and getting them to the point where they almost enjoy being bitch slapped by their lawyer, and just how long it takes I think to really become worth a damn, but I accidentally erased it all, so that is that.

But you know what? Over the decades, you end up with the clients who you really want, who really trust you, and are used to your style, and over time, have come to understand that it is to their benefit. You become friends. And that much at least is really satisfying. And now, it is hard to really retire, as long as I think some of those clients really need me, and want me.

Anyway, good luck Sam. :)

CC: Bullmoose, Badger

Also, Sam, the moment that there's enough publicly available information that something illegal happened, Clyburn's friends are going to launch a lawsuit.  So sit tight.  Obviously there's not such information yet, or if there is, someone more informed than myself will need to connect the dots.

All I can do is connect half he dots and see that the shape looks like a rotting fish. 

Additional thought: If this turns out to be the case, operatives need to make sure that their plant is on board with the party for Plan B, the freak case where their no-name plant for primary politics, ends up winning.

You'd think a felony case of distributing pornographic materials becoming national news would be enough of an incentive, but whatever bribe this guy took to appear on the ballot, if it did indeed come from Dems, didn't come with the "P.S. Oh yeah, if you win, please drop out" clause at the bottom.  

It should be said though, at least Alvin Greene is being more honest about his military record than Mark Kirk -- as Greene has publicly said from the start that his honorable discharge was involuntary. 

How did you all know I was sending direct mail pamphlets on Greene's behalf with my own money?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYtnrvn9xd4&feature=player_embedded#!

Curiously, 4% of Republican votes were absentee; but 27% of Democratic votes were.

The anomaly here is actually the number of Democratic absentee ballots in Lancaster County and how strongly they went for Rawl.

If you look at the neighboring counties of Chesterfield, Kershaw, and Chester, absentee ballots for Democrats were 7. 10, and 9%, and 2, 10, and 5% for Republicans, respectively.  So there were slightly larger share of Democratic absentees.  But given the relative interest level, this probably indicates more election day Republicans.

Absentee percentage for Greene: 60, 52, 56, and 16 (Chesterfield, Kershaw, Chester, Lancaster)

Election day percentage for Greene: 61, 57, 61, 59

So it is the absentee Democratic voting in Lancaster that is out of line, both in share of absentee votes and how strongly it went for Rawl.

Spartanburg County has 98 precincts.

There were 9 precincts where the total of Greene and Rawl voters equaled votes cast, but that was because only about 90.1% of voters voted in the Senate race, compared with 98.7% in the Democratic governor's race (which was visibly contested) and 99.7% of the vote in the GOP governor's race (86% of Spartanburg County voters voted in the GOP primary - voters pick a party at the polling place).  The precincts where there were no Dem senate abstentions were very low turnout precincts (If 10 voters are independently 90% likely to vote in a race, 34% of the time all 10 will vote).

I don't see any precincts where Greene got more votes than were cast.  The precincts where Rawl defeated Greene were pretty strong Republican (85-95%).  The precincts where more Democrats voted than Republicans - and presumably Black were slightly more favorable to Greene, but not sharply.

Overall, the results are pretty consistent with a very low information race, where most of the media attention would have been on the GOP governor's race (and lots of other races including congressional races such as Bob Inglis, and a 9-candidate race in Charleston with Strom Thurmond's son and a Black Republican).

There was a contested Democratic governor's race, and the two white candidates were from 2 of the counties where Rawl did slightly better.  And Rawl did better around Charleston and  Columbia.

In 18 counties, Greene ran 5% better than his statewide average
10 were 2 to 5% better.
8 counties were near to the statewide avearge.
2 were slightly more favorable to Rawl.
8 were 5% better for Rawl than his statewide average.

So Greene generally did better in more rural areas, where it is likely there was less news.  He did especially well along the Georgia border - which might get their TV from Augusta and might give superficial coverage to SC; and the eastern corner, where Florence stations might have a weak signal and weak news content, so that people depend on cable or satellite.

Besides, it may have been the same thing as in the PA-4 Rep primary - one known but unliked person, one perfect unknown, a general anti-incumbency mood, and voters use it as a referendum on the known person.
Who loses.

However he got on the ballot... he won the election. Just drop it. Ballot access is far too restrictive anyways.
Besides, I'd probably vote for him over most career politicians. :P

His support was reasonably consistent across the state, and generally strongest in rural areas, with a slight but not overwhelming bias toward areas with a larger black percentage.  But it probably isn't really reliable to base this on share of the population, rather than share of the primary electorate.  In some areas, like Greenville and Spartanburg, around 85% of the turnout was in the Republican Primary.  So even there, the Democratic primary might have been strongly black.

Greene had 5% better support than his statewide support in more counties than Rawl was at his strongest.  So Greene did better in rural areas.  He did especially well along the Georgia border, some of which is in the Augusta TV area, and in the Florence area in eastern SC, which is a smallish market.   These areas probably have weaker local news reporting, since anyone with talent is going to move to a larger market, and they might have weaker TV signals so more people rely on cable or satellite and do without local news.

The areas where Rawl did better in areas with a significant black population were scattered.

Orangeburg (south of Columbia) and Jasper (in the southern tip across from Savannah) had Democratic primary elections for legislative races, which I'm presuming would be decisive.  Democrats were 90% of the turnout in Jasper, and 65% in Orangeburg.  So it could be that there was a strong GOTV effort in those areas.  In other areas it could be more a matter of persons being vaguely aware that there was election day, but being so unaware that they would choose a Democratic ballot (South Carolina doesn't have party registration, so voters can choose a party on election day).  Rawl also did better around Charleston and Columbia, which may have had a little bit of news coverage of the senate race.  Rawl is from Charleston and was a legislator at one time, but I don't think recently.  Columbia is the state capital and also University of South Carolina, so there is probably more political awareness. 

Another strong Rawl county was Lancaster (on the NC border south of Charlotte).  But it had a really high volume absentee turnout (27% of Democratic vote which went 84% for Rawl), and only 4% Republican absentee.  But the election day support for Greene was very similar to neighboring counties, and in the neighboring counties absentee support for Greene was just a few percentage points lower than on election day, and absentee ballots were under 10% of the vote.

Presumably, absentee voters are a little bit better informed, since some election day votes will be more on impulse.  So absentee voting for Rawl in Lancaster looks suspicious.  It is the Rawl vote that is out of line, not the Greene vote.

The vote share for Greene was reasonably consistent across the state and even within counties.  So if you were flipping votes you would have to be doing it in 100s of precincts.  So unless someone planted a "Greene" hack in the firmware and if SC has bought its voting machines statewide, not too likely.

As for a well-targeted direct mail campaign.  Around 7% of registered voters voted in the Democratic Primary (17% in the Republican). 

So you can pick 2% of the population and have 100% success rate in getting them to vote for your guy.  That is either exquisite targeting or extremely convincing literature.  I think 1000s of voters walking into polling places with arms rigidly in front, saying repeatedly, "Must vote for Alvin Greene ..." would be noticed.

Or you can target 10% and have 20% success in getting them to the polls for your guy.  And if you can target 10% and not have anyone tumble across the mail-out to 250,000 voters, you also deserve to win.

So I vote for general cluelessness, in a very low turnout election for a down ballot race (SC puts federal elections below state elections), with perhaps blacks more likely to vote for the blacker sounding name - when I read Vic Rawl, I think "Lou Rawls".  Of the two Green congressmen from Houston, one is black and one is white.  I did read one comment by the black candidate for governor, who said that former slaves didn't know how to spell and added an "e" to the end of the name.  And that Green's are white, and Greene's are black.  I don't know if that is true or not.  Nathanael Greene, for whom Greene County in 16 states was named for (Kentucky and Wisconsin dropped the final 'e') was white.

The news reports are now saying that he was a 2000 Political Science graduate from University of South Carolina.  His spoken vocabulary and pronunciation suggest that it is possible.  He is somewhat reminiscent of a stutterer.

He is 32 and lives with his father who is 81 years old and has had kidney dialysis and has a heart attack.  He lives in a small town of I-95 in the eastern part of the state.  So I don't think it is unusual to be living with a parent at all, especially if you don't have a job.

He has been in both the AF and the Army, and was discharged involuntarily, though perhaps not dishonorably from the Army in 2009.

The disseminating obscenity charge happened in a computer lab in a dorm at USC, when he sat down next to a coed, and started talking about football, and then showed her some porn on his computer screen, and then suggested they go up to her dorm room.  He may be in some sort of his diversion program.  The lab was in a card access area, and it doesn't sound like he has any current student standing.

It is perfectly normal for surnames to carry older spellings with slightly more letters. These are, usually, the commoner forms. A non-English speaking immigrant who changed his name to Green sometime around 1900, OTOH (for example as an abbreviated anglicized form of a German or Yiddish name), would likely use the modern spelling. If "Green" is more white than "Greene" it is far more likely to be due to that - all the most common English names are statistically fairly "Black" in the US, some with Black majorities.

In the 1930 census, I have "Green" being 66.0% white, while "Greene" is 79.3% white.  Obviously, there are big caveats on this (namely, that the census had names written down by enumerators, who often didn't ask for spellings of names... woe upon those who were illiterate :P), but... at least it's data rather than anecdote.

In the 2000 census (http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html), Green was 36% black, and Greene was 25% black.

By 2000, Green was 59.3% Non-Hispanic White Only, 36.2% Non-hispanic Black Only; while Greene is 70.3% White, 25.5% Black. You see, I can check data sources too! :P Also, Green is apparently almost four times as common as Greene, and is the 37th most common name in the US while Greene is 228th.

The "blackest" names in 2000, out of those in the top 1000 nationwide (which rules out any African immigrant names) were
Washington 89.9, Jefferson 75.2, Booker 65.6, Banks 54.2, Jackson (the 18th most common name in America) 53.0, Mosley 52.8, Dorsey 51.8, Gaines 50.3, Rivers 50.2, and Joseph 48.8% non-hispanic Black.

EDIT: Damn you Torie. Overlooked your post.

In other news, PPP per its own analysis (http://www.live5news.com/Global/story.asp?S=12637260) says the Greene thing was a "completely random" event, so it is time to move on folks. It's been fun.

Oh, I wasn't doing the "can has sources" thing as a slight against anyone in the thread, I was just annoyed by a lot of the airheaded punditry being spouted on the news.  I didn't even know the census bureau had current statistics on last names and race.  ¡Sorpresa!

I hadn't realized or heard before that he was "the first major-party African-American U.S. Senate candidate in South Carolina since Reconstruction". I went on the wikipedia page for the election and nearly died laughing when I saw that.

And to think that the state was Black majority for much of that period...

The two most famous Al Greens in the history of the Wikipedia are both black, if that means anything:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Green

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Green_%28Texas%29

Although the closest on the this forum probably, I highly doubt AHDuke is anything at all like the kind of the Republicans typifying the GOP State Party Leadership and operatives.

AHDuke knew I was just using him as a prop. Of course he would go nowhere near any of this - ever. Hey, he wants to be a lawyer, and in my opinion, he was the potential to be an excellent one, and that means among other things, being an ethical one. Enough said. :)

More lulzy interviews plz

Is this for South Carolina or the US?

There could be big regional differences.  If there is a large slave plantation like you had in South Carolina, then it would be like some Mormon polygamist with dozens of "children" who have his surname.

I think that Greene would be a favored spelling in South Carolina (and perhaps much of the US, because of Nathanael Greene, who was head of American forces in the south during the Revolution.

There are counties named for Greene in NY, PA, VA, NC, GA, AL, MS, AR, TN, KY, OH, IN, IL, WI, MO, and IA.  Practically every state that had any counties to be named after someone, up through about the mid 19th century named a county for him.  Greenville, South Carolina and Greensboro, NC are both named for him.

So if you weren't sure how your name was spelled, you might be more likely to choose Greene, if that is the way it was spelled in your history books.

US of course.

No. People on one plantation (provided they hadn't broken down in the war anyways) didn't all get one surname, presumably their owners.
Rather, the pattern of surname adoption (in SC - the state studied. I'm doing this from memory) is vaguely reminiscent of Frederick Douglass' dictum of "give a man a bad master, and he will aspire to a good master" - virtually noone took their last owner's name (and those who did were basically making a direct statement about their biological father's identity), but most people took the names of former owners, relatives or business aquaintances of their owners, or other major slaveholders in the same region. (Which are categories with gigantic overlap anyways.)

It's actually quite tragic obviously, but (and this is a question to anyone) why hasn't there been a black Democrat on the ballot for senate or governor? You'd think since the 70's that it would have happened since so many of the Democratic voters there are black. I mean, sure the good old boy network was probably still in place in the 70s and 80s, but if blacks were voting in primaries then why hasn't this happened in the last 20 years?

Virginia elected a black governor in 1990. Harvey Gantt was the Dem nominee for senate twice in North Carolina in 90 and 96. Andrew Young was almost the senate candidate in Georgia in 1990, and Denise Majette was in 2004. There was a black nominee for gov in Mississippi in 2000, Troy Brown. We all know about Harold Ford. The senate nominee in Alabama in 08 was a black woman. There were two black gubernatorial nominees in Louisiana in the 90s. Am I missing any?

Well in SC, one of the Senate seats was of course taken by Fritz Hollings until quite recently. But why Strom Thurmond never had a Black sacrificial lamb against him... I dunno.

I find it rather amusing that nobody bothered to explain, or at least speculate, how this guy found the money to file for election and why he even decided to do that.

I mean, the guy is an indigent accused for felony but all of a sudden decides that it would be a good idea to run for the US Senate? What's wrong with this picture?

He's crazy?

Px, have you read my comments in this thread at all?

He qualified for a public defender a few months ago, and to do that you have to basically prove in court that you don't have 10k in the bank, and he's been unemployed since.  And on top of that, he spent no time actually campaigning despite that massive investment

I'm actually more interested in why it costs that kind of money to file for election? Seems it's not even a deposit? How can that be constitutional in any democracy? Pretty perv.

I've read them. But our Republican forumites seem to ignore all these bizarre facts and focus on strawmen like voter fraud.

It's also really hard to get outraged over "maybe something bad happened here." Especially when the result has no impact on who wins in November.

If someone finds some actual evidence of wrong doing, then we'll have a story going.

Nice hypothesis, but...

White Greens: 571
Black Greens: 2308
White Greenes: 139
Black Greenes: 176

(in 1930.  caveats apply)

"Greene", in general, is a much less common last name than "Green".

I'm more bothered by the fact that you can be denied a public defender if you aren't poor enough.

As for why the deposit is so high though, remember that this is South Carolina, which has never exactly been a bastion of good democratic practices. They can't get away with the poll taxes anymore but this is different.

I've never heard of a law like that in any other state before.....is South Carolina unique?

If this election ever does become close (and I mean this without scandals or similar anomalies), SC has some serious problems to take care of.

I think we're really missing something here when we call him crazy or slow. He did graduate from the University of South Carolina, which stereotypes aside, is a really good school. After that he was an intelligence officer in the military. I don't know for a fact he was an officer, he might have been enlisted, but every site is saying he was in the Air Force and Army for 13 years, and if he graduated college in 2000 I assume he did ROTC. Plus the circumstances would lead me to believe that he was an officer; usually the Army doesn't just give involuntarily honorable discharges to slow people that are enlisted.

So how did this guy accomplish those two things? The mystery to me is squaring the two facts that we have: a) he graduated from college and was intel in the Air Force and Army, and b) he's obviously got something wrong with him.

If he was in the Army for the entire last decade he had to have been to Iraq, he just had to. If not then he would have been in Afghanistan at least. Why have we only heard about him serving in Korea? Is this a case of PTSD that the Army just sort of washed it's hands of? Hopefully we here more about this because the media has been a failure in reporting on it so far.

The "serious problem" here mostly stems from a SC Democratic Party that's unable to run a candidate for State Senate who's unable to beat, essentially, a nobody with an attractive sounding last name.

If Greene is indeed a Republican shell candidate, then the SC GOP needs lessons on how to better run shell candidates.

Well, this is an issue because there seems to be SOMETHING shady going on, and while DeMint will be reelected, I think it deserves sorting out.

It's like that in a lot of states, including Virginia.

Yeah, that's a disgusting little detail. I suppose the justification is some bullshit along the lines of 'the costs of running the election'.

Sometimes parties also allow a petitioning alternative, like Kendrick Meek forwent the $5,000 fee and collected the thousands of signatures instead.  It's a fee that the South Carolina Democratic Party charges for automatic ballot access on a statewide, federal race, not sure if there is a petitioning alternative.

That's how most states do it. In Minnesota you need either 2000 signatures or a $400 fee for Senate, and that's the stiffest requirement for any office. I'm not sure how many signatures SC requires, but that is a pretty draconian filing fee regardless.

I think this is likely a case where Democrats want there to be a lot more to this than there is. Obviously, there are a lot of talented, well-paid folks taking a look at Greene and what happened in this election, so you may still get your answer. You seem to be the only one asking the right questions.

I think that the other question -- how can one guy no one knows beat some other guy no one knows -- is pretty ridiculous. Despite that, though, Dave Axelrod and other Democrats seem to be focusing on it.

This story is sad.  It's amazing to me how all the dems are trying to question this guys background as if he isn't good enough to be on their ticket.  It's pretty close to racist with some of the questions in the media like where did this black man get his money?  He's a republican plant. etc.

No one seemed to be asking these questions when dems were electing another certain black man who came from nowhere and had an even shadier background than Greene.

Some of it may be to do with the fact that Greene is Black, not mixed.

But... well... for a total nobody to be a Senate paper candidate? Not state house, county sheriff (of a major county), whatever? When's the last time that happened? Great Depression era?

The guy is unemployed. What unemployed regular joe has $10,000 sitting around that they can spend on a run for the US Senate that they have no intention of doing any campaigning for! It's like throwing money in the trash.

Congratulations!

Your post was so hackishly anti-Obama, you've earned a rare honor, a spot on my personal ignore list.

From the sounds of things, he put together a campaign for Senate. Just ... the kind of campaign for Senate you'd expect an 11th grader in a Social Studies class to come up with.

"I'll make this flyer in word... yeah, center it so it looks nice and official... and go to Kinkos and get ... hmmm... oh, that's ... canary yellow? Does that paper cost extra?"

Well how else would you have done it if you did and paid it all yourself?

The fee is 1% of the salary for the office, assuming a candidate wins and serves the full term.  A candidate could always go the petition route, which for a statewide office in South Carolina is 10,000 signatures.  The requirement for a petition candidate for any office is 5% of the registered voters eligible to vote for an office, with a cap of 10,000 signatures, which comes into play with the Statewide offices, Congressman, some of the Solictor districts and countywide offices in the three largest counties of Charleston, Greenville, and Richland.

U.S. Senate has the highest filing fee of any office on the ballot this year, since it has a 6 year term and the highest annual salary.  If he'd chosen to run for the S.C. House, he'd have only had to pay a $208 filing fee. Least expensive filing fee this year was for Anderson County Council, $178.60

Also, for parties that choose to nominate by convention instead of a primary, their candidates don't have to pay a filing fee either.

The fee for the GOP Presidential Primary in 2008 was $25,000.

Uh since youre ignoring me you probably wont read this but Ive been on here for months, and if you didnt know I was spectacularly anti-Obama until now, I think youve been living under a giant rock.  Whether its hackish or not, what about what I wrote isn't true? 

He claims he got the money from his military benefits. No entirely impossible.

But someone with $10k wouldn't have qualified for a public defense attorney

Not that uncommon really. Hell we have a solid example only two years ago: https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2008&fips=30&f=1&off=3&elect=0

I also think Chuck Hagel's opponent in 2002 was a truck driver or something. And McCain's in 2004 I believe was a middle school teacher though granted he ran a relatively serious campaign.

Lunar, he could have had an unaccounted for account or maybe military benefits don't count for that particular rule.

Also with some research it appears that Byrd's 2000 opponent raised literally $0. Figure might be somewhat inaccurate for obvious reasons, but the point is clear.

Perhaps.  But even then, why wouldn't he say that when asked [multiple times] instead of refusing to answer how he qualified for a public defender?

And why would someone who's been unemployed for the last 9 months spend that crucial money to register for a Senate Race for a non-existent campaign, one that involves no appearences at political events, outreach, 0 fundraising, 0 expenditures, and not even a website?  That sounds psychotic at best.

BTW I'm curious who this black candidate for Governor in Mississippi was that useful idiot mentioned. It obviously wasn't in 2000 like he said because Mississippi has its gubernatorial elections in odd years and in 2000 Mississippi had a white Democratic Governor (Ronnie Musgrove who was elected in 1999.)

I meant senate. It was Troy Brown, he ran against Lott in 2000, and got something like 31% of the vote.

I agree that there is at best, something fishy. If the SC-GOP were proven to have done something unethical or illegal, what would the ramifications be?

Why do you assume he is a GOP plant NCLib?

Something that should be said, of the 20% of the electorate [the entire electorate, both parties, I believe] that has heard of Vic Rawls, something like three quarters hold a disfavorable view if I remember correctly...so if that higher disapproval/approval number held true to the Democratic primary, it's possible that those who voted based on name recognition voted for the other guy, and everyone else just picked a name.

This is the part that is troubling me the most. It makes no sense. Someone would have to be literally insane to do that.

Well, that part doesn't trouble me because it's obvious he got the money from someone else or lied to the court to qualify for a public defender during his felony charge, unless there's some mystery law that protects military pay from counting as money in your possession for that sort of monetary evaluation.  I read an article where a South Carolina lawyer said directly that anyone with $10k in their bank account would not qualify for a public defender, if he legally qualified for the defender and had $10k in his bank account, I don't see why he wouldn't have made that argument himself instead of hanging up/refusing to answer when reporters ask him that kind of question.  

Lunar, I had quite a bit more then that from my fathers life policy and the taxman, etc didn't even consider that money as existing.

great interview on the Mark Levin Show

http://www.marklevinshow.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/14/sc-sen_alvin_greene_cant_immediately_name_gop_opponent_jim_demint.html

I cannot listen to any more of these.

Greene lives with his mom and Obama is a Harvard/Columbia graduate...Obama actually has charisma...

Very sick father, I believe...?  Lots of misinformation out there, I can't immediately figure out the facts with a glance at Google.

EVERYBODY JOIN JOIN JOIN JOIN

http://www.facebook.com/pages/1000000-Strong-for-Alvin-Greene/115195921858046

Magic, unlike some people who post here, I don't read every post of every thread.  I make liberal use of the Mark as Read button.  In any case, it isn't the fact that you're anti-Obama that caused me to put you on ignore.  It was that your post was so separated from anything approaching reality that caused me to do so.  It was the same level of hackishness if someone from the Democratic side claimed that Bush 41 was stranger than Rand Paul.

The South Carolina election commissions says the fee is set by the parties, but the link takes you to a single sheet.  So maybe the two parties agreed to the fees.

The fee for US Senate is 6% of the salary.  The fee for US House is 2% of salary (Representative and Senators are paid the same salary, so it looks like they said OOPs we better make them different percentages)

Fees for state and county offices appear to be 4% of salary, so there are some judgeships in larger counties where the fee is around $5000.  So Greene got a bargain for a statewide race.

If a state requires parties to nominate by primary, it has to pay for the primary, and the filing fee is set by the state, and there has to be a in lieu of petitioning process.  South Carolina doesn't not require parties to nominate by primaries.

South Carolina appears to have some election laws that have been left over from the time when the the parties (or party at that time) ran their own primaries.  But the State has become involved in actually running the primaries, probably related to the VRA.

Some States set high fees and low or no petition standards.  When you have low fees and high petition standards, you have candidates cheating and keeping other candidates off the ballot by challenging their petitions (like Obama did when he ran for state senator).  In some states, petitions are presumed to be valid, unless someone challenges them.  So you can have someone file with 100 signature when they need 10,000 and get on the ballot.  And someone else files 100 signatures and they get challenged and knocked off the ballot.

So it is actually more practical and fairer to charge a high fee.  Serious candidates pay the fee because it is cheaper than collecting a bunch of signatures.

Kendrick Meek filed his in lieu petition for publicity purposes.  He spent a lot more collecting them than the fee would have been.

He say he decided to run when he was serving in Korea.  He was separated from the Army last August, and arrested in November.  He hasn't been indicted, so it sounds like perhaps he is in some sort of diversion program.

Greene shares a home with his 81-year old father, who has had kidney dialysis treatment and had a heart attack 4 years ago.  His brother lives next door, in a small town in rural SC.  Maybe if his grandmother was a bank vice president, he could have gone to prep school.

Pardon my ignorance. Yes, I could use google, but I prefer to ask here.

So, who the feck is Alvin Greene?

The Democratic Senate nominee from South Carolina. Pictured in my sig.

An unemployed ex-soldier of 32, and noone knows where the money to file for election came from. He won the primary 60-40 because his opponent was just as completely unknown except in Charleston COunty and to political insiders, and had a recognizably white name and was listed in second position on the ballot.
It doesn't matter anyways because people are happy with republican incumbent Jim DeMint.

The most brilliant political mind of our time.

That too.

It sounds like it is physically painful for him to answer questions.

The more and more I see from this the more I see that the democrats are embarrased because they dont want what they see as "a dumb black man" being a representative of their party.  This is the same thing they were doing with Patterson in NY.  I see a man who's normal, who wants to have a voice about the issues but hasnt found his own voice yet.  He's articulating his feelings.  Sure dems can get upset and stamp their feet, but democracy was never meant for the elites only.  Our founding fathers would be proud.  I bet Greene would do a better job than all of the democrats currently holding office (though its too bad hes up against DeMint, i wish it was the other senator from SC, Grahamnesty).

What is the question of this poll ?

DERRRR DUMBOCRATS BADDD

He has his bachelor's in political science? That should make so many of us feel special.

http://www.therightscoop.com/jon-stewart-defends-republicans-against-planting-accusations-of-alvin-greene

John Stewart had a good segment about him last night.

While the GOP could have put up the money for the filing fee, and it would not surprise me, they were not the voters in primary.  The Democrats did that to themselves.

I'm beginning to move into the pity camp on this guy.

Anyway, I can think of two theories, one super-paranoid and one more mundane.

Super-paranoid: the guy took a bachelor degree in pol sci, so he was once smart. Then he got into the intelligence service and he emerges dumb as a door-knob and with seeming memory loss of his time in the service. So, maybe he was involved in something top secret and weird and was brain-washed/damaged so as to not leak something. Someone with money did this in order to set the limelight on him and make it public without having to come forward themselves.

Mundane: the guy is a weirdo who has saved money for a long time in order to run because, it is a fixation of his. He lied about the public defense thing. And that's pretty much it. Maybe some Republican guy put him upto it, maybe not.

Or the normal: Some operative paid him a little money to file his name on the petition.

Lunar's is the only theory worth paying attention to (not the voter fraud crap), imo, but the facts present to us right now fail to provide the connection that he suspects is going on.

Something that may be interesting though, is that $10,000 is, I believe, the exact amount that someone can write you a check for that causes the bank to automatically red flag the transaction and pass it along to the government for inspection.

It's how Eliot was caught.  So if an AG's office were to inspect, they might not have to even subpoena very far, depending on how well the tracks were covered

If they were stupid enough to transfer the $10K at once, they deserve to get caught.  Heck, if they gave it to him via anything other than cash, in small amounts, they deserve to get caught.  We'll see.

Hell, I mean, Eliot Spitzer did it, and he was a high-level lawyer with familiarity with this kind of thing.  But to use his words, maybe he was just "Icarus" and "flew too close to the Sun"

The idea that Alvin Greene may not have covered his tracks perfectly wouldn't surprise me.

And again, this could be either a Democratic operative (as without Greene, Rawls wouldn't have his name appear on the primary ballot in South Carolina) or a Republican one.

Good points here...  Weigel's talking about Cohen when he mentions Illinois fwiw

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/what_if_alvin_greene_just_won.html

You see what Democrats are doing. It's possible, as happened in Illinois earlier this year, that a party can become saddled with a bad nominee and shame him/her into stepping down. But let's be clear -- the Democratic claim that Greene was planted is based on a lot of vapor and little evidence. Sure, it's possible that South Carolina's warring Republican consultants have taken a blood oath and are revealing nothing about the plan to help Greene get on the ballot. But the best explanation for Greene's win remains the easy one -- Democrats who didn't care about the race marked the first and (marginally) more familiar name on the ballot.

How often does this happen? It happened one month ago in Indiana. Democrats held a low-interest primary for the right to take on Rep. Dan Burton. Everyone in the party backed Nasser Hanna, a professor who raised $110,995 and spent a little less than a third of that. Nobody endorsed Tim Crawford, an unemployed conservative activist who spent no money. Yet Crawford not only won -- he crushed him with 60.9 percent of the vote, a bigger margin than Greene scored in South Carolina. He won every single county.

What happened? Crawford's name was first on the ballot and -- though we're getting into rougher territory -- it resembles those of voters in the district more than "Nasser Hanna." (Hillary Clinton won this district over Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary.)

It's frustrating for party strategists to realize that its electorate is so sleepy, their candidates so disengaged, that stuff like this can happen. But the day after Greene won, before this spinning started, DSCC Chairman Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) explained that Democrats simply didn't engage in the race. The subsequent charges of GOP trickery don't have a basis in the facts.

No, on several accounts (no pun intended).  First the $10,000 is for cash transactions.  It doesn't apply to thinks like checks or wire transfers.

Second, they do keep track of smaller wire transactions/checks, if they look suspicious.  I think all of Spitzer's transactions were four digits, but he had a lot of them.  They originally thought he was on the take.

Third, though your facts were wrong, as usual, :) your premise could be right.  Four cash transactions of $2,500, one each month, probably wouldn't raise any official interest.

I know I'm suspicious of where Greene suddenly got $10K.  That doesn't change the fact that that $10K doesn't translate into votes.

The figure is 1% of the annual salary, times the number of years the office is for.  So DeMint and Clyburn end up paying the same amount after six years, it's just that Clyburn gets to pay for his safe seat in three easy installments.

Lunar will likely soon have his answers!

http://www.thestate.com/2010/06/28/1353788/us-sen-race-greenes-finances-subject.html

"Harpootlian, who has extensive criminal law experience, said it’s rare for law enforcement to actually verify bank accounts of people who claim they don’t have enough money to hire a private attorney and therefore qualify for a taxpayer-paid lawyer. If someone deliberately lied about their financial resources to get a free lawyer, Harpootlian said, that could be grounds for criminal charges."

Roger Stone brings up a great point about Alvin Greene: the fact that his name begins with the letter "A" shows that he was very likely picked under the process he knows as "Aardvarking"

http://stonezone.com/

So if I ever run for office I should use my middle name,, as it starts with an A. Gotcha.

Greene probe closed, no wrongdoing found.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39556.html

Yeah, this is why I don't think there's any big mystery about why he won.  When you have a race between two candidates, and nobody knows who either candidate is, people will just pick on some "random" basis that isn't truly random, like "Greene sounds like a better name than Rawl."  There doesn't have to be any deeper explanation than that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/us/politics/11greene.html?hp

I think he wants us to show him porn. (http://www.alvingreeneforussenator.com/the_issues)

Come on, DSSC, this is just mean

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/23/alvin-greene-nomination-b_n_657629.html

DSSC wouldn't have bothered with Rawl anyway

You mean DSCC.

Hell, I would find a way to spin this.  So that not only does Greene look like a Washington Outsider, being opposed by the party leadership might help convince the voters in SC that Greene is anti-establishment enough and would oppose the Dems due to their animosity, to support him.

His Facebook page (if it is his?!? LOL) is quite hilarious.

I was just copying Lunar's, it's not like I bother to know what I'm talking about in this realm.