Mystery in S.C.'s Democratic primary deepens

[Truth2Tell]

Source: Washington Post

The intrigue surrounding this week's Democratic primary contests in South Carolina intensified Friday as campaign finance reports linked Gregory A. Brown, the challenger who lost to House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, to a Republican consulting firm.

Clyburn on Thursday called for federal and state investigations after another candidate, Alvin M. Greene, an unemployed Army veteran who lives with his parents, won a Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate there. Greene, who has an felony obscenity charge pending, "was someone's plant," Clyburn said.

Clyburn contended that Greene's campaign, and those of two other African American candidates, were designed to upend the Democratic primary process in the Palmetto State. He also named Brown and Benjamin Frasier Jr., a perennial candidate who surprised observers by beating retired Air Force Reserve Col. Robert Burton in the 1st District.

-snip

But in FEC reports filed late Thursday and early Friday, Brown reported that his single largest payment was to the Stonewall Strategies firm run by Preston Grisham, a former aide to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.). Grisham, a 2005 University of South Carolina graduate, was an intern for Wilson in 2003 and went on to serve as his special assistant and campaign manager.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/10/AR2010061004943.html

---

So it looks like Clyburn is actually on to these guys... all three of the son's of bitches.

Republican fuckin' operatives.

[neverforget]

1. Dirty tricks by Republicans! I'm shocked!

[mikelgb]

2. shit's goin' down in the palmetto state

[donco6]

3. This is getting jucier by the minute. n/t

[WeDidIt]

4. Somebody will probably go to prison over this shit

Alvin Greene will probably end up singing like a canary to stay out of prison.

[customerserviceguy]

18. And that might well be Alvin Greene

It's not illegal for someone to give him a campaign contribution, but it is illegal for him not to have reported it.

I also fail to see where it is illegal to encourage someone who has a right to run for an office to do so. It doesn't make any difference what the reason is.

[Truth2Tell]

21. But Alvin may not feel like takin' the fall here...

and if he discloses a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws then more could fall.

[customerserviceguy]

23. He'll talk

but unless he can decisively implicate someone else who told him not to declare the $10K donation, they'll not go to jail for it. After watching Olberman, does anybody here believe that a defense lawyer for a perpetrator wouldn't be able to rip Greene apart on a witness stand?

It's going to take something in writing to that effect, that is thoroughly verifyable. DeMint and his people are way too smart for something like that. At the very worst, it might be the work of a prankster who is too smart to give up anyone higher up, if there is any such person or persons.

In any case, it does not explain how the Democratic voters of SC actually went for the guy, or why. It also fails to explain why anyone with half a brain thought that this scheme (if there was one) would have the result we're all talking about.

[hughee99]

38. Unless they can prove shenanigans in the voting process

how do you go about removing the candidate that the people voted for? Maybe he didn't declare some donations, but that's happened before and I don't recall primaries being overturned on that, and short of pictures of DeMint personally handing him cash, the conspiracy is likely going to be difficult to prove between now and the election.

I hate to say it, but if the state party steps in somehow and invalidates the vote (I'm not sure they can even do that) without proof that the vote was rigged or that Green is on DeMint's payroll, it's going to seriously bother me. Just wait until we talk about the "will of the people" and how "ever vote counts" and the repukes start talking about the primary where the party didn't like the results and ignored the will of the people.

[LisaL]

45. He is unemployed man who got a public defender for his

obscenity charge. So how was he able to pay over 10,000 $ in filing fee?

[hughee99]

47. If he got the money from someone other than DeMint's people

or the RNC, then it's really just an issue of not reporting it, which I'm sure he'd get a fine for, but if the money came from a "local businessman" and not someone with serious ties to the repuke party, what are they going to do?

Besides, this guy didn't even campaign, unless the vote was rigged (which is certainly a possibility) what was the repukes' plan, to piss away $10K on a guy who doesn't even campaign in hopes that he'd somehow win?

If this guy did NOTHING for his campaign, do you think he had someone to explain to him what he had to file with the FCC regarding campaign contributions?

[HooptieWagon]

63. If someone was going to rig the DREs, there would have to be a name to flip the votes to.

[heliarc]

69. +1

Bingo.

[heliarc]

68. And it doesn't explain the discrepancy in votes cast nt

[TroglodyteScholar]

51. And how, exactly, did this unknown candidate get 59% of the vote? n/t

[No Elephants]

67. Encouraging Greene to run alone is not what got Greene 58% of the Democratic primary vote.

Neither did the "e" at the end of hisname, as some fools (or shills) have been theorizing.

[sunnybrook]

74. Somehow I feel like he will sing for the highest bidder

He asked the Washington Post reporter if he could get paid for the interview

[Tansy_Gold]

5. K&R -- but seriously. . . . .

are the pukes so stupid that they think this wouldn't be discovered? I mean, c'mon, all the info is out there in public records.

Are they THAT stupid? Really?




Tansy Gold, thinking maybe they are but still shakin' her head in amazed disbelief

[zeemike]

8. But if they can get buy with this the sky is the limit

To a November surprise all over this land.
Will the media even talk about it?

[xxqqqzme]

46. I hope the dumb ass voters of

California are paying attention to this crap. The dumb ass voters approved the open primary prop on Tuesday. I got into an argument w/ a very good democratic friend over the POS prop. He just would not listen to reason. I even gave him a hypothetical example, just like this SC goof job, and still he wouldn't listen. Have I said 'I told you so' yet? No, he's smart, he'll apologize.

[Truth2Tell]

9. Ties to Joe Wilson fercrissakes.

His people may actually be this stupid.

But it STILL doesn't make sense. Almost always the game is to plant candidates to suck votes and weaken incumbents or establishment candidates like Rawls and Clyburn. They are typically not intended to win. And this guy Greene strikes me as a guy that hadn't actually planned on seeing prime time. He was coached just enough to answer a few phone questions with a few local reporters as an also-ran. In which case the question of how he won remains a mystery IMO.

[bluestateguy]

6. I still don't get it

Jim DeMint may have the safest reelection of anyone in the Senate this year? Why the need for ratfucking tricks?

[Tansy_Gold]

13. I agree. it makes no sense whatsoever.

The only rationale that makes any sense at all is that it was done as a distraction. But from what? From something DeMint himself did/said/whatever?

Ultimately, EVERYTHING makes sense, if all the facts are known. We just don't know all the facts.

Yet.






Tansy Gold

[TroglodyteScholar]

52. Perhaps this was a trial run that was expected to go largely unnoticed? n/t

The theory that this guy is a plant does nothing to explain how he WON. Where did the votes come from?

[Blue_Tires]

57. +1000

the only thing that surprises me is the GOP masterminds behind this stunt didn't fabricate some false trail linking this to ACORN or something...

[HooptieWagon]

55. A trial run? n/t

[Brother Buzz]

65. The paranoid Richard Nixon had all but a lock on his reelection, too

How did that work for him?

[totodeinhere]

7. Polling house says randomness, not tampering prevailed in Greene's win

A polling information center has concluded the surprise primary victory for Alvin Greene was not a GOP plot, but a completely random outcome based on an election in which both candidates were unknown.

"I don't see any evidence of GOP chicanery," said Tom Jensen, the director of Public Policy Polling.

Rep. Jim Clyburn has called for an investigation into Greene's win, saying he has seen evidence of tampering in a number of races across the state. Jensen disagrees.

"Ultimately, what we're concluding is it was pretty much completely random who was going to win given that no voters had heard of either of the candidates," he said.

http://www.live5news.com/Global/story.asp?S=12637260

I'm not saying that I necessarily believe this. I'm just throwing it out there as another possible explanation. But I do wonder why the GOP would try something like this and take a chance on getting caught when Demint was going to win the election anyway.

I'm not familiar with this Public Policy Polling outfit. But they are claiming that according to their polling Rawls only had 3% name recognition.

[Truth2Tell]

10. And the mysterious "Democrats" with ties to

a Republican consulting firm "randomly" won?

[totodeinhere]

12. I don't know. But someone with ties to a Republican consulting firm has every right to run in the..

primary as a Democrat if they want to. It should be up the Democratic voters to make informed decisions and if they don't want someone with ties to Republicans then by all means don't vote for them.

Of course if there has been tampering with the voting machines then that's another story and the Democratic voters couldn't be blamed for that.

I just hope that we can eventually get to the bottom of this one way or the other. Based upon recent history it is very easy for people at DU to pile on this and automatically assume that it's some kind of conspiracy. And maybe it is. Let's see.

[Democat]

49. Isn't it illegal for Republicans to pay for his campaign?

One of the articles said that crimes were likely committed because this guy couldn't have paid for his own campaign. Someone put a lot of money behind him, which may not be legal.

[Mist]

11. I think very little in politics is actually random. Just my .02. nt

[customerserviceguy]

19. Perhaps little in politics is

but in elections, randomness exists all over the place. Many states have rules that require the names of candidates to be rotated in position on the ballots, just to avoid the "voted for the first name I saw" thing that probably happened here.

[totodeinhere]

14. Here's another possibility.

Was Mr. Greene a plant? I really don’t know. If he was, however, I’m sure his supporters did not expect him to win the nomination. Their purpose would have been to force Rawl to spend money on the primary so that he would be at an even greater disadvantage in the general election campaign against DeMint.

http://matisak.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/democratic-and-mystery-candidate-alvin-greene-won-a-primary-in-south-carolina/

[Truth2Tell]

16. I'm almost sure that's the case...

the fact that he won is what blew the whole thing.

[customerserviceguy]

20. That doesn't make sense, either

Any money Rawl spent would have lifted his own name familiarity, and he'd need that for the general election, anyway.

My question, does SC have voter's guides that go out in the mail to every household? If so, did they have pictures of the candidates in them? I'd venture to guess that the majority of registered Democratic voters in SC are African-American, and went with identity politics if that was the situation.

[Truth2Tell]

22. I think racial identity politics

and a lack of campaigning by Rawl likely caused the surprise Greene victory.

But I still think he's a put-up who didn't expect or intend to win.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

25. self delete- wrong place

[StercusAccidit]

24. If Greene were a plant...

If Greene were a plant to get Rawl to spend money in the primary, wouldn't he have campaigned in order to show that he was at least an even marginally viable candidate? If Rawl thought that Greene was no threat (which by all accounts he did given Greene's failure to campaign), he would have invested extra money in the primary. However since it appears as though everyone thought Greene was some kind of joke and didn't take him seriously, then I assume Rawls did not invest extra money in the primary.

[Truth2Tell]

27. I don't think the motivation necessarily would have to have been

to get him to spend money. It could have been just to pull down his numbers with black voters.

[customerserviceguy]

29. All I can tell you for sure

is that if Greene looks like he was forced to withdraw to let a white man run, don't look for it to play well with African-American voters in SC, or anywhere else in the South, for that matter.

At this point, the best strategy would be to investigate the bank account where the $10K check was drawn from, and unless you can find very clear and convincing evidence that some evil forces put it there, you just let him run in the fall. Any serious stuff about not filing on a possible unreported donation should take place after the election.

[customerserviceguy]

28. Agreed, this is just a fluke

I apply Occam's Razor to this, and I come up with simple "I feel comfortable with a guy named Greene over a guy named Rawl" mentality as the most likely explanation for this win.

[cosmicone]

41. "Open Primary"

where pubs voted for plants when the pub candidates were "safe" or unopposed.

This is why Pubs wanted an open primary amendment in California to subvert the process.

[totodeinhere]

44. Of course that's a two way street.

Democrats can and have used the same tactics. That's politics for you.

[heliarc]

70. Go to... http://www.fivethirtyeight.com

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/sc-democratic-primary-getting-weirder.html

[handmade34]

15. sad...

people playing games with positions of power that determine the quality of our lives...

[Ian David]

17. As someone on Twitter said, which is worse:

That Democrats accidentally chose Greene, or that Republicans intentionally chose Angle?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

26. Strange political experiments hatched in a deep underground Republican laboratory?

Some guy from out of nowhere who essentially runs NO campaign gets elected against someone who should be better known (4 term state Senator), especially by people voting in a PRIMARY for heaven's sakes. Primaries are where the turnout is usually your most committed and informed voter.

This does smack of a very quiet "operation Chaos" type thing. Rush's mistake before was in talking it up. So, a group of Republicans decided the concept was great (disrupt the opposition's primary, but do it quietly) and crossed lines in an open primary to elect an unelectable guy for the general. This would ONLY work if the conniving party's own primary was uncontested or basically a foregone conclusion. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was a test run. Maybe we'll have REAL Manchurian candidates in the future.

The other thing that strikes me as almost being experimental is how lunatic Hannity and Rush have become. Obama is a "Marxist"?! Democrats are "Marxists"?! But yet they say that stuff without a hint of irony. I feel like they are trying to measure how many people they can get to believe and say in public and actually catapult the lunacy they say. I don't know how they could measure a hate and idiocy metric like that, perhaps in polls. "Do you believe that President Obama is a Marxist?". Maybe they only do it in internal polling?

Crazy stuff. I'm not really serious about the experiments. But then again, I kinda am.:silly:

[glitch]

53. They do make trial runs, and Rush does telegraph their punches.

Worth looking into, no doubt about it.

[JDPriestly]

30. Has anyone checked to see whether it might be possible for a

Republican voter in Arkansas to switch to vote in the Democratic primary?

Is there any evidence that that might have happened, that enough voters might have switched to throw the Arkansas primary?

[bergie321]

31. I think

K.O. said last night that South Carolina has open primaries. Anyone can vote for anyone.

[heliarc]

71. SC has open primaries...

Go to http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/sc-democratic-primary-getting-weirder.html

[aquart]

32. KO: Greene got more votes than were officially cast!

I'm officially curious.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

40. WOW! Now we have some serious election fraud.

And if the Dems don't jump on this like a pitbull and follow it through every single smarmy personal and technical and political detail , I am through with them FOREVER!

This could be the greatest opportunity we'll ever have to expose election fraud.

And, my dollinks, it has to be election fraud as opposed to voter fraud because of the vote overage!

[glitch]

54. b i n g o nt

[WeDidIt]

33. Now revealed, Greene got more votes than were cast in multiple districts

Just now on Countdown.

[Truth2Tell]

34. Could the game plan here really have been

to have this guy win? Via fraud? And cause the Dems to put up a complete idiot against DeMint?

Why in hell would anyone do that and not expect to get caught?

This is still not making sense. But it sure is interesting.

[WeDidIt]

35. To discredit African Americans

The point was obvious to me.

[Stevepol]

36. Please forget that I mentioned this since it couldn't possibly be true but

do you think it might possibly have a tiny bit, just an itsy bitsy bit to do with the voting machines?

As I said forget that I even mentioned this because I know it's such a ridiculous suggestion and probably I have ulterior motives of some kind or I'm a conspiracy theorist who is half-lunatic for even mentioning it.

And if you tell anygbody else, I'll deny I said it because I don't want to be thrown into that big pile of crazies who offer zany theories to explain things that are obviously very complicated.

Just forget I said it.

[mitchum]

37. Those sandlapping scumbag republicans Frank Barron and Rod Shealy were already notorious...

for this kind of shit in SC

[Cartoonist]

39. Nothing new here

There's existing precedence for this very thing.
About thirty years ago a Lyndon Larouchite named Fairchild was nominated for Lt. Governor for Illinois on the democratic ticket. The dem party was completely taken by surprise. No one knew who the candidates were and voted for Fairchild because they liked his name. Stevenson had to distance himself from the guy by running as an independent. He lost. The dems are going to have to eat this one, and they deserve it for never having learned their lesson.

[The Doctor.]

56. That's not what happened here. Nice attempt though.

[Gin]

59. they voted with paper ballots.....not quite the same as this

election that cannot be verified.

[Cartoonist]

60. Similarities

You both "ASSUME" facts not in evidence. Or rather, facts you want to be true.
The BIG similarity is the dem party's total lack of knowledge that Greene was on the ticket, and their failure to say anything about him.

[heliarc]

72. Please see Five thirty eight.com

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/sc-democratic-primary-getting-weirder.html for an analysis of all the possible scenarios.

"Greene" as a name appears before Rawl, but there is a discrepancy between the absentee turnout for Greene and Rawl where Rawl won by almost 80 % and the turnout on election day where Greene won by almost 11%... and Greene and Rawl got more votes put together than were cast for other races...

Those facts suggest that innocent name preference which might have given Greene a 6-8 % advantage in a race where NO ONE knew the candidates going in is not really the culprit here.

[wordpix]

42. repug operatives aside, how idiotic is it that Repugs can pick Dem nominees & vice-versa?

Seriously, in my state Dems elect their own people in primaries and Repugs elect theirs.

[aquart]

43. Open primaries are legalized fraud.

So naturally California voted for them.

[heliarc]

73. Shameful.

[autorank]

48. k*r Could it be ELECTION FRAUD?

Even Kos was hinting at this. Ironic since election fraud was deemed to be wacko stuff. Now that
the in-crowd's ox is being gored, they're crying fraud. Well, you know what that means...
conspiracy :rofl:

[flamingdem]

64. +1 yup

[SpiralHawk]

50. Republicon Family Pharisee Values again

Republicons just don't do honor, as they repeatedly demonstrate.

[brooklynite]

58. While it would certainly be sleazy, I actually don't see how it would be illegal...

If they find a registered Democrat who's eligible to run, and Democratic voters are stupid enough to vote for him, what's the crime?

[wordpix]

61. we don't know yet but could have something to do with the financing ...or Diebold machines

[Infinite Hope]

62. What recourse do they have if they find Greene was a phony? What other options?...

A write-in candidate?
Supporting an Independent?
Can they change the outcome or change who appears on the ballot through political or legal maneuvers?

[Hawkowl]

66. Can't focus on elections in the past

We need to look to the future! We can't spend precious resources and time prosecuting crimes in the past...