Can an unemployed, unknown vet win a US Senate seat?

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

No money, no website, no campaign infrastructure to speak of. So how did Alvin Greene defeat former judge and four-term state legislator Vic Rawls?

Is it really such a surprise that in a year with a strong anti-incumbent, “throw the bums out” mood, voters are prepared to vote for just about anyone? Some have speculated that when South Carolinians went to the polls on Tuesday, the fact that Greene’s name appeared at the top of the ballot led to the near 100,000 – or 59 percent — votes he received. Perhaps.

But maybe the only thing voters needed to know about him when they got to the polling booth was the fact that they didn’t know him, therefore he must not be an incumbent politician in any office. In other words, he was the more unknown of the unknowns and that was just right.

Given that Rawls was thought to be the better candidate, why didn’t voters know his name? While most expected that he would win the primary, expectations for a general election victory against Republican incumbent Jim DeMint seemed unlikely.

That conventional wisdom suggests that democratic voters in South Carolina may have already conceded the seat to Jim “Waterloo” DeMint who now appears to have a cake walk in front of him. After all, it’s tough to get your name out in a meaningful way with only $186,000 in the bank.

Unfortunately, Mr. Greene, won’t be able to celebrate his victory for long as he now faces questions about a pending felony charge for allegedly showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student, the Associated Press reports.

From the current Governor, to the Republican nominee to replace him, to Mr. Greene, just what is it about South Carolina and sex scandals anyway? Let’s hope at least Mr. Greene has a friend or two who will help him avoid a Rand Paul style series of gaffes his first week as his party’s nominee.

While it seems unlikely that Mr. Greene will be able to mount a serious campaign against DeMint, it would have been fun to watch a head to head contest between a guy who’s priority issue is jobs and getting people back to work, and a darling of the Tea Party movement and a Republican party that has called the passage of the Civil Rights Act an example of government intrusion, supports de-regulating Wall Street and privatizing social security, and dreams of striping away health care benefits.