The Curious Case of Alvin Greene

[minionofmidas]

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.

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?  

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.

[minionofmidas]

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.

[minionofmidas]

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! 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.

[minionofmidas]

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

[minionofmidas]

US of course.

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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.)

[minionofmidas]

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.

[minionofmidas]

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.

[minionofmidas]

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?

[minionofmidas]

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

[minionofmidas]

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.

[minionofmidas]

The most brilliant political mind of our time.

That too.

[minionofmidas]

I think he wants us to show him porn.