Alvin Greene rose from relative obscurity to become South Carolina's Democratic Senate candidate (Photo courtesy of The Christian Science Monitor)

Meet Alvin Greene, Democratic nominee for Senate from South Carolina. In a year when the prototypical Washington insiders are the most at risk for losing both their influence and congressional seats, Mr. Greene represents the quintessential outsider. The son of a teacher, Greene studied political science at the University of South Carolina and was a decorated soldier and airman in the Army and Air Force where he received an honorable discharge. Greene said he first got the idea to run for elective office while stationed in Korea in 2008 and, according to him, saved two years of military pay to enter the Democratic primary.

As Jon Stewart so eloquently noted, the story seems like something right out of a movie. An unemployed and decorated veteran takes on the party establishment and the heavily favored candidate Victor Rawl, a former judge and state representative. Over 100,000 Democrats elected Greene their nominee while Rawl received less than 70,000 votes. If only the story were that simple.

The day after his crushingly decisive victory over Rawl, a felony obscenity charge surfaced from November 2009. At the University of South Carolina, Greene allegedly showed explicit material to an 18-year-old girl while in a computer lab; he then allegedly offered to accompany her to her room. Not surprisingly, the girl called the police. Following several televised interviews, many in the media quickly questioned his mental fortitude and ability to hold office.

The question thus remained, how could a candidate for the United States Senate march into Election Day with these swirling allegations and win? The answer lies in the fact that nobody considered Greene a serious contender for the seat. Neither the media nor political pundits did any digging into his background because Rawl was considered such an overwhelming favorite in the race. In an election in which 30 percent of voters participated (a typical margin in American politics), one can assume the majority did little, if any, investigating themselves.

Mr. Greene managed to carry the primary with 60 percent of the vote. His margin of victory was by no means razor thin, despite the fact that Greene did not produce any advertising, lawn signs or, as he put it, “host any formal events.” The question remains then, what would motivate over 100,000 people to enter the voting booth and pull the lever for a man the vast majority had never heard of? The conclusion is striking and has been echoed by State Representative Todd Rutherford among others: alphabetically Greene’s name appeared first relative to Rawl. Not knowing either candidate, voters chose Greene because his name was the first they saw or because Senator Greene sounded better than Senator Rawl. Either way, the events of June 8 cast light on a back story to American politics that is hardly unique or new.

Consider that while South Carolina Democrats now find themselves looking rather sheepishly at their shoes, those of us from Illinois are all too familiar with absurd candidates or so-called electoral accidents. Case in point: this year’s former Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, Scott Lee Cohen. A former pawnbroker and cleaning supply distributor, Cohen was selected by Democratic voters to, as Huffington Post contributor Robert Elisberg put it, become governor “if the sitting-governor is caught trying to sell a Senate seat and gets impeached.”

The trouble with Mr. Cohen is that he is a domestic abuser who was not only $54,000 behind on his child support payments, but was also accused of assaulting his convicted former prostitute ex-girlfriend with a knife and putting her head through a wall. Luckily for Cohen, she did not show up in court and the charges were dropped. When asked by the Chicago Tribune about the allegations, Cohen responded by saying that his integrity is the best thing that could have happened to the Democratic Party. Luckily for Pat Quinn, the incumbent lieutenant governor that replaced Rod Blagojevich after his impeachment, Cohen relinquished his spot on the Democratic ticket for which they would have had to run together.

Uninformed voters are nothing new. Known as the 1986 LaRouche election debacle, Democrats effectively handed the Republicans a gubernatorial victory and made then-incumbent James Thompson the longest serving governor in Illinois history. In that year’s Democratic primary, two supporters of political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche, Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, ran for and won nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, respectively. For those not familiar with the LaRouche movement, their ideology includes universal mandatory HIV testing followed by quarantine of the victims, colonization of Mars, space-based laser defense systems, an end to a balanced budget requirement for the federal government, and the formation of a Nuremburg-style tribunal to investigate the dealings of journalists, Zionists, and others. Lastly and most impressively, the LaRouchies want to hang several American leaders such as Katherine Graham and Henry Kissinger for treason.

While the LaRouchies did articulate their twisted agenda to all who would listen, their financial spending on the campaign amounted to a grand total of $700; those who cast their ballots for them had no idea what they stood for. Unlike Cohen, the LaRouchies did not withdraw from the ballot once found out, but like Greene, spent hardly any money on their campaigns and likely won because of their names. Among the many explanations for the debacle that emerged out of that election, one posited that Democrats voted for the most American names on the ballot. Voters who knew absolutely nothing about the candidates chose to elect the cult members based on their “WASPiness” over the “obviously” foreign Sangmeister and Pucinski.

Somewhere in these not-so-freak occurrences exists, one might say, a teachable moment. For those who intend to cast a ballot in November, there really is no excuse for being uninformed about all candidates. Now that the primaries are over, both parties have openly been preaching two diametrically opposed philosophies on government. Those who felt buyer’s remorse after 2004 or 2008 because they felt their candidate mischaracterized his positions perhaps should not have voted. The most important thing is that there is still time to become informed lest we send Lyndon LaRouche to Capitol Hill because of his surname.

 Print This Post