Jim Clyburn: Winner Of South Carolina Senate Primary May Be A Republican Plant

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jun 10, 2010
3:24pm

I posted earlier today about Alvin Greene in South Carolina winning the Democrat primary for the US Senate despite being unknown in political circles there and apparently not having campaigned at all. Democrats are crying foul, not wanting this guy on their ballot for obvious reasons (he’s facing felony obscenity charges), and now Rep. Jim Clyburn is claiming that he’s a Republican plant.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) articulated the suspicion of many South Carolina Democrats this morning by suggesting that the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary victor Alvin Greene was a “plant.” …

“I think there’s some federal laws being violated in this race, but I think some shenanigans are going on in South Carolina,” Clyburn told Press. “Somebody gave him that $10,000 and he who took it should be investigated, and he who gave it should be investigated.”

“I would hope the U.S. attorney down there would look at this,” Clyburn said.

“There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary,” Clyburn said. “I don’t know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone’s plant.”

Here’s a can’t-miss, off-the-rails interview between Greene and Shepard Smith:

There’s certainly some question about where he got the money to file for his campaign. Four months before he came up with a $10,400 personal check at Democrat party headquarters in South Carolina he’d filed an affidavit of indigent status with a court. Plus, he’s apparently unemployed since his military paychecks stopped last August and he lives with his mother.

But setting aside the question of where he got the money, if he was a plant he wasn’t much of a plant. By all accounts, the man didn’t campaign at all. How can you be a plant when you don’t campaign? If political operatives were going to plant someone, wouldn’t they want someone who would cause a ruckus?

It seems to me that Greene’s victory (which wasn’t small, he got 59% of the vote) was a fluke more than anything else. He didn’t campaign. He came out of nowhere to win. So how else do you explain it other than Democrat primary voters in South Carolina didn’t really know who they were voting for?

Of course, he’s also the first major party black Senate candidate from South Carolina since reconstitution, so maybe he got the vote because of his skin color? But again, how could that have happened is he was as unknown as everyone says he was?