Vic Rawl was supposed to coast to a primary victory for the Democratic nomination in South Carolina for the right to oppose incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in November's general election. It would be an uphill fight for Rawl; DeMint is a darling of the Tea Party movement.
But once the dust settled and the votes were counted after Tuesday's primary, Rawl found himself defeated by a political first-timer; Alvin Greene, a 32 year old unemployed Army veteran won with more than 60% of the vote.
Vic Rawl, 64, served four terms in the South Carolina House and was a former prosecutor and a circuit court judge. Alvin Greene spent 13 years in the Air Force and the Army before leaving the service last August. He has no government or political experience.
And Greene didn't have any fund raisers for his campaign, and ran no ads. But there's more; Greene was arrested in November on felony obscenity charges. Court records, as detailed in The Huffington Post, indicate that Greene was arrested after showing obscene internet photos to a university student and then wanting to see the student in her dorm room.
South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, appearing on Bill Press' radio show found it quite unusual that an unemployed man was able to post the $10,400 filing fee to run for the Senate, had no website, no TWITTER account, had no fund raisers, and no commercial ads was able to win the primary. Clyburn said the following on Press' show.
There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary, I don't know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone's plant."
Mr Clyburn is calling for a probe by the US attorney into the primary, and also into to other races in South Carolina.
This evening, Alvin Greene appeared on COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann.
Now are you ready for even stranger and even more bizarre? Check out these two interviews Greene gave to South Carolina public television after his primary win.
By the way- did we mention that in South Carolina they have open primaries? That is, you can vote for a candidate in a primary of a party other than the one you are registered in, or an independent voter can vote in any primary without having to declare party affiliation?
Just a thought.
In my opinion....the way primaries appear to be run in South Carolina have all the transparency of the 1919 World Series.
No comments:
Post a Comment