Alvin Greene is an unemployed veteran who has never held political office. After filing for the Democratic primary in the Senate race from South Carolina, his campaign seemed to stop. There is no Alvin Greene web site, no Alvin Greene bumper stickers, no Alvin Greene yard signs. There’s not even an Alvin Greene FEC filing.
Nonetheless, Greene won last night’s Democratic primary, beating Vic Rawl, a judge who served in the South Carolina legislature for four terms. A judge who had gathered $186,000 for the campaign.
“I wasn’t surprised, but not really. I mean, just a little, but not much,” Greene told Mother Jones.
Greene, on the other hand, didn’t raise a dime. In March, he walked into the state Dem headquarters and handed over a personal check for $10,400, the filing fee to run in the Senate race. The chairwoman, Carol Fowler, was taken aback and told Greene he needed to start a campaign account and write the check from there. A few hours later he came back with a proper check, according to the Free-Times, and filed.
After that, nothing. Fowler says Greene didn’t show up at political events, including the convention. Rawl has never seen him.
But somehow, Greene took 59% of the vote last night and will face Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in the fall. There was, by conventional wisdom, little chance Rawl could beat DeMint, who has millions of dollars to spend on a campaign and is popular in South Carolina.
Fowler speculated to the AP that Democratic voters unfamiliar with both Rawl and Greene chose Greene because he appeared first on the ballot.
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