Little-known candidate shakes up SC Senate primary, but faces felony obscenity charge

Who? Surprise SC Senate hopeful shakes up primary

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A day after an unemployed veteran shocked South Carolina’s Democratic establishment by winning the U.S. Senate primary, party officials were still scratching their heads: What happened?

Alvin Greene, 32, didn’t raise any money. He didn’t have a website. And his opponent was a relatively better-known former legislator, Vic Rawl, who had already planned fundraisers for the fall general election.

Greene was considered such a long shot that his opponent and media didn’t even bother to check his background. If they had, they would have discovered he faces a felony obscenity charge after an alleged encounter with a college student last fall.

After The Associated Press reported Greene’s charge Wednesday, the leader of the state Democratic party said she asked Greene to withdraw from the race.

“I did not do this lightly, as I believe strongly that the Democratic voters of this state have the right to select our nominee,” chairwoman Carol Fowler said. “But this new information about Mr. Greene … would certainly have affected the decisions of many of those voters.”

But Greene said he will not step aside.

“The Democratic Party has chosen their nominee, and we have to stand behind their choice,” Greene told the AP at his home in Manning. “The people have spoken. We need to be pro-South Carolina, not anti-Greene.”

Court records show Greene was arrested in November and charged with showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student, then talking about going to her room at a university dorm.

Charged with disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity, Greene could face up to five years in prison. He has yet to enter a plea or be indicted, and neither Greene’s attorney nor a woman listed as the victim immediately returned messages.

South Carolina state law prohibits convicted felons from serving in state office. Felons can serve in federal office, although the U.S. House or Senate could vote to expel any member deemed unfit to serve.

Rawl said he didn’t know about Greene’s arrest until reading media reports about it.

“It’s an absolute surprise,” said Rawl, who scrapped a late-week fundraiser after the loss. “I can’t really make any comments, because I don’t know what’s going on.”

His prior arrest aside, questions abounded in the day-after deconstruction of Greene’s win.

Had Rawl been a victim of the anti-incumbent sentiment that swept the state’s primaries? He only carried four counties, but one was Charleston, where he currently serves on county council.

Did Greene capitalize on some sort of a movement among either black voters or the unemployed? A subset of the Machinists’ union ran cable ads in South Carolina encouraging the state’s jobless to vote, but the group says it never promoted directly Greene or mentioned his name. The director of the state’s NAACP chapter says he knew nothing about Greene, who is black, before the win.

There was so little known about Greene’s race, background or employment history that it would be hard to believe any of those factors played a role.

It certainly was not his communication skills: Greene spent the better part of an hour Wednesday morning repeatedly putting a reporter on hold before hanging up after the mention of his arrest.

Greene’s win may come down the simple fact that his name was listed before Rawl’s on the alphabetized ballot, a possibility Fowler said she pondered Tuesday night. Now, Fowler is trying to rework general election schematics that had assumed Rawl would ultimately face off with DeMint.

Even if Rawl had been successful, one analyst expressed skepticism it would have made a difference against the juggernaut of DeMint, a tea party darling who has marshaled a $3.5 million war chest already in the pursuit of his second term.

“A lot of it speaks to the lack of depth of the bench for the Democratic Party in South Carolina right now,” said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Winthrop University. “Their best shot in November, really, is the Governor’s Mansion.”

Associated Press Writers Seanna Adcox in Columbia, Jeffrey Collins in Manning and researcher Barbara Sambriski in New York contributed to this report.