South Carolina Begins Probe Of Democratic Candidate Alvin Greene

Columbia, SC, United States (AHN) – The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is investigating how Alvin Greene, who is accused of being a “Republican plant” after winning the Democratic primary early this month, paid for his campaign’s filing fee despite telling a court that he has no money for a lawyer to defend him against a felony obscenity charge.

According to the State, the agency is invoking a law enacted just last week that requires banks to provide state officials with basic information about account holders suspected of financial irregularities.

The 32-year-old Greene has been out of work for the past nine months and is living with his father. He won the Democratic primary without holding any campaign events, and without help from staffers or contributors, raising questions how he paid the $10,400 filing fee and whether he is a Republican “plant.”

The group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has requested South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster investigate whether Greene was induced to run.

“[Greene] was assigned a public defender, a service normally provided only to indigent defendants,” the group said in a letter to McMaster earlier this month. “Mr. Greene would have had to complete a questionnaire attesting to his income and assets and showing his indigence to qualify for a public defender.”

Greene has insisted that he used money from a personal account to pay the filing fee, but has not explained why he was assigned a public defender as an “indigent.”

He has also refused to answer questions about how he will pay for a private lawyer. The public defender assigned to Greene has told the State he received a letter from an attorney informing him he represents Greene in the case.

“I’ll just let that be my business,” Greene told the Post and Courier when he was asked about how he he plans to pay for his new lawyer.

Greene has been charged with a felony for allegedly showing pornographic materials to a female University of South Carolina student and then asking the 19-year old to go with him to her room.

The Democratic candidate has refused to talk about the felony charge against him. He has also refused to shed light into why he was “involuntarily but honorably” discharged from the Army.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the most powerful African-American in Congress, was first to raise questions about Greene’s candidacy. He had called on federal officials to investigate “shenanigans” in the primaries, citing the case of Rod Shealy.

South Carolina has a history of Republicans “planting” blacks in Democratic primaries that have white candidates leading in polls in order to ignite racial tensions. Shealy, a GOP strategist, was convicted in 1990 of enlisting an unemployed black fisherman also faced with felony charges to run against a white incumbent congressman.

Green defeated former state lawmaker Vic Rawl, who filed a protest citing irregularities in ballots and reports of “extremely unusual incidents” such as “voters who repeatedly pressed the screen for me only to have the other candidate’s name appear.”

Rawl and Clyburn had pointed out that voting machines used in the primaries were outlawed in Louisiana for their unreliability.

The state Democratic Party, however, voted to uphold the results of the primary despite having previously asked Greene to withdraw because of his felony case. The prospect of campaigning for an unemployed newcomer charged with a felony, against a Tea Party conservative, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, in a race rated by the Cook Political Report as “solid Republican,” has prompted some Democrats to pool their efforts elsewhere.

Supporters of Linda Ketner, an activist and 2008 contender for the U.S. House of Representative, are gathering 10,000 signatures for a petition to include her in this year’s ballot as an independent. The campaign describes itself as a grassroots effort to “give all South Carolinians a real choice for their U.S. Senator.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has refused to get involved in the issue. It previously made no mention of Greene on its website, but now has his name as a candidate for the Senate in South Carolina. No other statements refer to Greene, and the committee focuses on DeMint’s record of going against his own party and endorsing insurgent Tea Party candidates over the official choice of GOP leaders.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has likewise kept its distance, leaving the state GOP to argue in a blog post, “Both the Attorney General’s office and the state Election Commission say that there’s no evidence of anything but Alvin Greene winning fair and square.”

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