S.C. Dems question Black candidate’s legitimacy

Created on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 11:34 Last Updated on Monday, 03 December 2012 19:28 Published on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 11:34 Written by Courier Newsroom Hits: 923

(Afro.com)—Controversy has arisen in South Carolina as Alvin M. Greene, an unemployed veteran facing felony charges, has won the state’s Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.
Greene’s win was improbable, as he’s never given a campaign speech, doesn’t have a website, has no campaign signs and only has $114 in his campaign bank account. Yet, more than 100,000 South Carolinians voted for him.

As a result of his unlikely victory over four-term state legislator Vic Rawl, Greene will face incumbent Republican Sen. Jim DeMint in November.

SENATE CANDIDATE—Alvin M. Greene, South Carolina’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, poses for a photo in Manning, S.C., June 9.

“I’m the Democratic Party nominee,” Greene, who lives with his 81-year-old ailing father, told The Washington Post. “The people have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina.”

Greene is also facing felony charges for allegedly showing pornographic images to a female college student last October. Greene shrugged the charges off in an interview with the Post.

“It can go away,” Greene told the newspaper. “Just think about a charge. It can be dropped by the solicitor. It can be dropped and erased like it never happened.”

“Folks should be given a chance to correct themselves,” he said. “Somebody could just be trying to get somebody in trouble. You see, somebody, you know—you just can’t work around somebody. It’s hard. I’m just trying to talk about something, frankly. I’m just trying to talk from my perspective. People should be friendly. I mean, leave it alone.”

However, many in the state’s Democratic Party smell a rat, and wonder how an unemployed man found $10,400 to register his candidacy by running such a low-budget campaign with no contributions. Some believe Greene was planted by the Republican Party.

“There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told the Bill Press radio show on June 10. “I don’t know if he was a Republican plant. He was someone’s plant.”

According to The Politico, Clyburn has asked the U.S. Attorney’s office in South Carolina to look into both the charges against Greene and the source of his candidacy filing fee. But Greene dismissed the idea of an investigation, and said he’s upset with the party, who he claims hasn’t given him any support for his campaign.

“From day one, they just didn’t have confidence in my campaign,” he told Fox News.

The South Carolina Board of Elections said it had no plans to investigate the legitimacy of Greene’s candidacy, but the state’s Democratic Party wants him off of the ballot because of his felony charges.

(Reprinted from the Afro American.)