(SC News on Greene) The Manning-churian Candidate

[Ruby the Liberal]

Source: Columbia Free Times

On the Wednesday morning following the June 8 primary elections, the South Carolina Democratic Party was in a state of apoplectic shock. It had made national news again for all the wrong reasons.

State party executive director Jay Parmley looked like he’d bitten down on a joy buzzer as he sat in the chair of his office, scrolling up and down the precinct reports on his computer monitor shaking his head, cursing under his breath, wondering why, why, why; how, how, how?

SNIP

Greene never filed with the Secretary of the Senate, according to its Washington, D.C. office. He didn’t file with the Federal Elections Commission, which the FEC requires by law. When the state Democratic Party held its convention in April, Greene didn’t even show up. He won anyway, taking in over 100,000 votes and beating the vigorously campaigning Vic Rawl, 58 to 42 percent. He won in all but four counties.

SNIP

Theory one: Greene was a Republican plant set up by a shadowy GOP cabal and his win was orchestrated by a crack team of Blackwater-type professional election riggers who pulled off the entire thing without a hitch

SNIP

Theory two: Blacks spell Greene with an “e” on the end, and the average voter in a South Carolina Democratic primary is a black woman. Also, Greene’s name appeared above Rawl’s on the ballot and the name Rawl sounds like white Charleston aristocracy.

SNIP

Theory three: The ballots were flipped.

SNIP

“I funded my campaign entirely with my personal money,” (Greene) said. “I didn’t have to spend much.” He clarified that he’d spent a little more than $500, but wouldn’t say what he’d spent it on. He said he self-managed his bid. He’ll have to raise money, he said, to get “fancy campaign material.”

Read more: http://www.free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992209084141467&act=post&pid=11861006100935349

---

Emphasis mine.

Much, MUCH more at link.

Ps - I didn't include it in the snippets, but "Manning" is Greene's home town in SC - hence the title.

[Mz Pip]

1. If there were any shenanigans

on the part of the GOP, it will come out. There has to have been some kind of GOTV effort on the behalf of Greene to end up with 60% of the vote. Someone out there will have an email or a phone record or something that will point to an underground effort to put this guy up against DeMint. This kind of thing can't be kept secret indefinitely. There's always someone out there will to spill what they know.

Someone is behind this and I just can't believe the Democratic voters of SC are really that clueless.

[Ruby the Liberal]

8. I am surprised that some hasn't already bragged about it on Rush.

[Greyskye]

2. That's a really great article. HIGHLY recommended!

What a bizarre story. Some of the quotes given by him in this piece are verbatim to answers he gave Olbermann in his interview tonight.

Fascinating; I can't wait to see how this turns out.

:kick: & R

[BrklynLiberal]

3. It would seem he is more of a "Stepford" candidate than Manning-churian

[BlueIdaho]

5. This whole thing stinks.

After watching this guy on Countdown, it seems impossible he could convince anyone to do anything - ever. He looked like a deer in the headlights and simply parroted everything his off-camera lawyer told him to say. I mean really, the guy comes up with ten grand to run, and when informed the money couldn't be his personal check, comes up with a political committee complete with a bank account and checks in about an hour or so. He goes no where, spends no money, has no big media advertising, no facebook, no twitter, no campaign workers, no posters, no town hall meetings, no office, nothing - zilch - zero - nada.

This really stinks.

[No Elephants]

54. A very expensively dressed deer in the headlights, who could barely suppress smiles when he was

supposedly giving serious answers to serious questions about his "campaign" and whose lawyer was off-camera coaching him.

[LisaL]

74. How would he afford a lawyer? Lawyers don't come cheap.

Somebody is interested in him doing it, so who and why?
"Carter's involvement, like almost everything in Greene's saga, has an element of intrigue. Carter says he's working at the behest of "unofficial members of Greene's campaign" but won't identify them.

"These are people who are interested in this election," Carter said in an interview. "Persons from his county. They are people who know him.""
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061106159.html

[Withywindle]

65. That was one of the most disturbing interviews I have ever seen.

It really touched off my embarrassment squick - I have a visceral reaction to seeing a hapless person being humiliated. I don't even really like that kind of comedy even when I know it's all scripted with actors. And Keith realized pretty quickly that the guy wasn't all there and made sure to use only small words and.....aaaaaaaaaawkward.

This is just WRONG. It doesn't happen without some really sleazy crap going on. It just wouldn't. In our media-driven environment where so much depends on glibness and charisma? I mean....who do they we are, asking us to swallow this?

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. Someone posted it in my twitter feed. It was eye opening to say the least!

[dmr]

50. Their server is down - too many connected. Drats!

Hopefully it'll be back up soon.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Cannot help but wonder where the $$ came from..

On March 16, Greene had walked into the Democratic party headquarters in Columbia and tried to give them a personal check for the $10,400 filing fee to run for U.S. Senate. Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Folwer told him he needed to start a campaign account; several hours later he returned with a campaign check. He asked that his name, address and picture be immediately put on the party website, showing he’d filed.

[boppers]

6. Maybe people were sick of Rawl.

"a well-known former legislator, judge and current Charleston County councilman who’d raised a quarter of a million bucks for the race and for months been campaigning his ass off...." It could be voter backlash, people deciding that they were tired of lawyer/politician candidates.

[Curtis]

That's what I think

I just don't get it. We all complain that we are tired of career politicians, we get someone like that and then we want to crucify the poor guy. Get behind this guy and prove that corporations cannot buy our elections.

[Alcibiades]

21. We don't all complain about that

I'd rather have a quality candidate (i.e., someone who has held elected office before) running against the Republicans than someone like Greene, who seems to have been specifically chosen because he's inarticulate.

[Curtis]

30. Well, yeah

all was a stretch. How about a lot of people (not just people here)

[Alcibiades]

37. delete

Responded to wrong post.

[Frances]

46. Did you see and hear him on Olberman??!!

[wordpix]

61. I did &..."weak verbal expression" comes to mind

:crazy: That was quite an interview, KO could barely get a word out of Greene.

[No Elephants]

67. Because his lawyer was off camera, feeding him answers to KO's questions.

KO mentioned that after the interview was over.

[JDPriestly]

51. Greene doesn't seem to really know anything about public policy or

politics. What is more, he doesn't really seem to care. You have to listen to him. It's ridiculous.

He needs to be investigated. There is something really strange about him. Have you heard him talk about Korea? It's not that he is wrong. It's just that he doesn't sound normal.

[caledesi]

66. Have you listened to him? I am smart enough NOT to be behind him. nt

[UTUSN]

7. K&R big #5 for great article, fast, up to the minute n/t

[Ruby the Liberal]

11. This is why I love twitter. Obscure news from the corners of the globe in real time.

[customerserviceguy]

10. I'm inclined to believe theory #2

I do believe that a lot of voters just vote for the name they think they like the best when they don't know diddly-squat about a race that is not highly publicized. It's not that hard to believe when Repukes do it, why is is so hard to believe when it happens on our side?

Let's face it, if the average voter were half as educated as the least of the folks around here, there'd never be a Rethug elected in this country again.

[Ruby the Liberal]

12. Did you read the full thing? The opposing candidate was WAY up

in various regions that he lost by a landslide.

I don't know enough about SC politics/county demographics to analyze it and do not disagree that it is a possibillity, but it is in no way NOT suspicious.

[customerserviceguy]

16. I doubt that any truly serious polling was done in the first place

DeMint is so solidly in, I cannot imagine news organizations or other competent polling organizations doing any truly expensive polling research.

It wouldn't matter which Democratic candidate won the primary, DeMint is a shoo-in in November. To me, that makes it so much less likely he'd try some silly trick with such an obvious stooge like Greene.

[Ruby the Liberal]

22. Candidates poll - in order to know what counties to focus on.

[customerserviceguy]

26. And candidate polls

are often unscientific in their methods, they tend to ask the wrong questions, in the wrong ways, and get false positives from people who are being led to give the 'correct' answer. Show me that Rawls paid some good money for his polling, and I'll maybe give the conspiracy theories another look.

[Ruby the Liberal]

31. Greene spent $500 on his "campaign" for the US Senate with nothing to show

but copies of a flyer. No office, no staff, no publicist, no rallies,

US Senate.

In 2010.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4422179

[customerserviceguy]

36. Five hundred bucks can be spent

in a lot of ways that don't leave much evidence, such as travel expenses, when you don't keep gas receipts, for instance.

[JDPriestly]

52. Greene is a joke. Sorry to say that, but he is. It's very good 'ol conservative

Southern boy.

[awoke_in_2003]

13. "Blacks spell Greene with an “e” on the end"

Hmmm, someone better notify Lorne Greene.

[Faygo Kid]

14. Also better tell Al Green, too.

[alfredo]

15. All in All, it's not easy being Greene.

[No Elephants]

56. Or Green. Gives "racially-tinged" a whole new meaning.

[awoke_in_2003]

18. Maybe Al Green

and Lorne Greene were swapped at birth?

[Freddie Stubbs]

72. That is his stage name. His birth name is Albert Greene:

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

[JDPriestly]

53. And doesn't the name Rawls remind you of Lou Rawls? That's a very

African-American name. It's famous and for good reason.

[awoke_in_2003]

55. You know...

I didn't even think about that. My mind was not connection the similarity between "Al Green" and "Alvin Greene". Didn't put that together until I read your response.

[Freddie Stubbs]

73. That was a stage name. His real name was Lyon Himan Green:

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

[WheelWalker]

17. What a great article....

The thing is, for the Democratic Party to pull something like this off it would be like the Apollo program...

[4lbs]

19. First of all, he's been unemployed for a while. Where did the $10,000 to file to get on the ballot

come from?

If a person is somewhat long-term unemployed, they aren't going to spend $10,000 of their own money (do they even have that much at that point?) to run in a primary, and then have to spend thousands more dollars to win in the general.

[totodeinhere]

24. Someone probably gave him the money but as far as I know that would not be illegal. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

28. He would have to declare it on some sort of campaign financing

reporting law. If he didn't do that, it would be illegal.

[totodeinhere]

33. Correct. But the illegal act would be Greene's, not the contributor's. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

35. Yes, true

but if that's the case, then whoever supposedly put Greene up to this is dealing with someone with such an incomplete knowledge of the law, that it would be risky to trust him.

If Greene were unsophisticated enough to think that he'd not have any consequences of taking someone else's campaign money, then he'd be easy for a prosecutor to roll over with a light sentence for turning in the donor. I can't see Jim DeMint's people being that careless, especially when he's got this race in the bag anyway.

[totodeinhere]

40. If Greene simply naively didn't know he had to report it then I bet..

they would let him off with a fine. I know that Nevada Governor Gibbons, a Republican of course, didn't report some contributions, by mistake he said, and he got away with a small fine. Also, I'm not sure when the reporting deadline for something like that would be.

[customerserviceguy]

43. Yes, I don't think much will happen to Greene

but at some point, some prosecutor is going to want to catch the big fish who set this up, if indeed, it was a plant. Any lawyer who flunked the bar exam would tell Greene to give up the name in exchange for the certainty of a light sentence. DeMint and his people had to know that.

It shouldn't be that tough to do an investigation of the bank account that the $10K check was drawn on, if there were no large deposits over a short period of time, then this might well have genuinely been Greene's money, and he may just have been delusional enough to think that he'd win an election with no formal campaign behind him.

Frankly, his win of this primary, plant or no plant, will encourage others to do the same in other places.

[LisaL]

69. He got a public defender for the obsenity charge he is facing.

So he had to have told the court he does not have money to hire a lawyer to defend him. But he goes and pays over 10,000 $ to file? Where did he get that money?

[sunnybrook]

79. I suppose it's possible

If you are living with your parents. But there was obviously fraud in him getting a public defender.

This story fascinates me and I do tend to think there has to be some kind of dirty tricks. However, I once did a research project on Cynthia McKinney, when she was in congress. She had zero trust of the press, after being demonized for speaking out against the war, and just in general. Journalists from Atlanta CONFIRMED to me the racist position of the major newspaper. And she very much did campaign "under the radar," so to speak. Directly in and to the African American community with little to no mainstream press coverage. When he says there were friends of friends that were helping, it really actually could have been some kinds of informal get togethers and so on. I am just saying that I think this is possible. He also may not be as stupid as people think, simply because he is not polished talking to the media. He might be totally different in another situation.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ruby the Liberal]

23. That isn't fair and is quite insulting, IMO.

Have you ever been grilled by national media for launching a national campaign after a big (controversial) win?

I doubt I could have spelled my own name correctly under that pressure if I was in this kid's shoes. He has no idea the level he is playing on at this point and he didn't get himself there 'by his own bootstraps".

[totodeinhere]

27. He is a college graduate. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

29. So's Rand Paul

and he blithered like an idiot for Rachel Maddow.

[totodeinhere]

32. But I don't think anyone is calling Paul retarded. Or are they? LOL. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

34. I've seen it at least implied here!

Having a college degree just signifies that you could fill out an application, and somebody paid enough money to a school. I've met some incredibly stupid college graduates, haven't you?

[totodeinhere]

38. Yes, and I have met many extremely intelligent non college graduates. n/t

[totodeinhere]

25. Here is another excerpt from the article.

The problem is, it would take a vast conspiracy among programmers who didn’t even know each other to pull off something via the voting machines, says Steve Skardon, director of the Palmetto Project, a non-profit that analyzes voter trends and reports, among other things. Each machine, he says, has four separate memory banks inside and the machines shut themselves down if a human screws something up.

Also, the state Democratic Party catches a whiff of nearly everything that’s discussed, mailed or used as campaign material when it comes to Democratic campaigns statewide, says executive director Parmley. No one heard anything about Greene during the campaign, he says.

SC has an open primary, so Republicans could have voted for him. But if that's what happened there is nothing we could do about that.

[mzmolly]

39. Where did an unemployed man get 10K, and why did he use a check from a brand new

bank account if he had the money for any length of time?

[totodeinhere]

41. We should find out the answer to that question, since if someone gave him the money..

he is going to have to report it as a campaign contribution and list the name of the contributor.

[mzmolly]

42. Except he claims the money was his. I'd love to take a peek at his

bank records.

[customerserviceguy]

45. Surely, someone will

It's only been two days since he went from extremely likely also-ran to Democratic nominee. It takes time to unearth these things, we should know in a short while.

If it looked like he had a shadow of a chance of winning before the election, we'd already know where that $10K came from.

[LisaL]

70. His money?

He got a public defender for the obscenity charge he is facing.
So he had to have told the court he does not have money to hire a lawyer to defend him. But he goes and pays over 10,000 $ to file? Where did he get that money?

[mzmolly]

75. I didn't know this. Excellent point!

:hi:

[Jamastiene]

47. They cannot accept personal checks.

So he set up a bank account and brought a check back from that one.

Now, if I can just remember where I read that. I did read it though.

I still have some questions too though.

[Jamastiene]

48. Couple links:

http://free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992912064017974&ShowArticle_ID=11011905102861700

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20007256-503544.html

[No Elephants]

57. thanks. Good links.....

"Greene’s curious candidacy raises the question that something else might be going on.
Republican place markers in Palmetto State Democratic primaries are campaign legend.

In the early ‘90s, a Republican strategist was prosecuted and forced to pay a fine when he was found to have coaxed an unemployed black fisherman into running in a primary race to increase white turnout at the polls in a Lowcountry congressional race. The political operative paid the man’s filing fee."

http://free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992912064017974&ShowArticle_ID=11011905102861700

"Here's more evidence that Republican Sen. Jim DeMint is facing what appears to be the easiest reelection campaign in the country: Alvin Greene, the unknown 32-year-old who somehow won the Democratic Senate nomination in South Carolina, is reportedly facing felony charges for allegedly showing obscene online photos to a University of South Carolina student."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20007256-503544.html

[mzmolly]

60. Bizarre.

:freak:

[Turborama]

44. Could this whole thing be a dry run for the GOP's 2012 campaign?

Just a thought that popped into my head.

[Jamastiene]

49. Oh, damn. Don't give them any ideas...

although, you are probably right. They've done it before. This might be their latest test run of a new vote stealing idea.

[No Elephants]

58. Cannot believe this reporter is trying to make this a race issue, based on alleged racial spelling

of names.

Does Corey Hutchins need a helmet?

[fasttense]

59. RepubliCONS voted in Greene. The state has open primaries

Which means RepubliCONS can vote in Democratic primaries and that is how Greene supposedly won. They choose him and I hear they picked a couple other fake democrats to run in this election season too. Then the CONS paid them, and ordered their minions to vote for him (or merely switched around the votes on the machines). It is so blatantly obvious I'm surprised no one says it.

Oh, by the way, If you watch the interview, you can tell he's a big fat liar. Look at how he constantly moves, and looks around. The man is clearly uncomfortable with what he is saying and it shows. He has so many "tells", I would love to play poker with him.

[wordpix]

62. at another DU thread on this, someone pointed out they were Diebold machines

:tinfoilhat: and you know what that means.

[krabigirl]

63. I actually kinda like the guy.

And that "sex offense" was showing porn to a college student? I don't get it. Seriously, though, the guy served his country and has every right to run just like everyone else. So he won, big deal?

[No Elephants]

68. The problem is not whether he won, but whether he won honestly or not and also

whether he is a shill. Rawl was within 7 points of DeMint.

[LisaL]

71. A man older than 30 years old who is accused of showing porn to an 18 year old

girl sounds just fine to you, ha?
And according to him his discharge from the army was "involuntary."
Whatever the hell that means, it does not sound too good to me.

[Roland99]

64. His "interview" with Keith O. was nothing short of mind-numbingly bizarre

[mitchum]

76. He comes off like one of those "look a here" cowboys wandering around Columbia

[sixmile]

77. high weirdness

Can Greene beat Demint? I would love to see that debate!

[Synicus Maximus]

78. SC has open primaries. So odds are a lot of Repubs voted for

Greene. That is how they voted Cynthia McKinney out in Georgia.