I don’t know how this gem of a political thriller escaped me, but now that I’m hearing about Alvin Greene and reading up on his run for a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina, I can’t look away.
Greene won a whopping 59% of the vote in the primary, despite the fact that he’s an unemployed veteran who with no political background to speak of.
After Greene’s primary victory last spring, U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn, called for an investigation and forwarded the notion that Greene was a “plant.” The Democratic Party in South Carolina also asked Greene to step off, given that he has a felony obsenity charge handing around his neck. Green refuses to admit any wrongdoing in the case and he refuses to remove himself from the race.
But can he defeat Jim DeMint next month and become the freshman Senator from the Palmetto State? It’s highly unlikely, but so is everything else about Alvin Greene’s candidacy. Including the publishing of his “manifesto for a fairer America” in The Guardian.
I’m unemployed, and, if elected, I can teach the Harvard rich kids in the White House and the senate a thing or two. I will vote for any law and propose any measure to keep jobs in my state of South Carolina. I will vote for huge tariffs, and, if necessary, vote to ban imports of foreign goods. Millionaire egghead politicians in the pocket of big business talk about “free trade” – and let all of your jobs get shipped overseas.
No more free trade. Your job is not going to Indonesia.
In this time of internet hoaxes and fake news, it’s only natural to bring a lot of skepticism to this story. When you watch Greene get grilled by ETV, CNN and MSNBC it’s hard to image that his run for Senate is for real.
Yet, his run for Senate is real. Some of the explanations for Greene’s primary win include the fact that his surname is a popular name in the African-American community. Others have pointed out the simple fact that Greene’s name appeared first on the ballot–a ballot with a lot of unknowns–helped him win. Then there’s the fact that some South Carolina voters made the association with soul singer Al Green.
According to the Spartanburg newspaper, Greene spoke in upstate recently about widening roads, expanding water and sewer access in rural communities and the need to invest in alternative forms of energy. He also reminded the 80 people in the crowd three times that South Carolina ranks 49th in education. The reporter also noted that Greene “was noticeably more confident than the last time he spoke in Spartanburg County.”
I say, Go Greene! South Carolina could do a lot worse, and will, with six more years of radical conservative Jim DeMint.