Alvin Greene is Here to Stay

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The South Carolina Democratic Party voted overwhelming to uphold Alvin Greene’s victory over Vic Rawl last week. Members of the state party’s executive committee rejected an appeal by Rawl to hold a new Senate primary contest. State and party officials have now rejected three of the four challenges to Greene: Earlier this week, South Carolina Attorney General, Republican Henry McMaster, declined to investigate the election results, citing an absence of any evidence of “criminal wrongdoing.” Similarly, the state’s election commission has also declined to investigate. And so far, none of the conspiracy theories surrounding Greene’s win have yielded any hard proof. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

A few anxious South Carolina Democrats—concerned about Greene’s rather, erh, unpolished candidacy—are already groping for a Plan B. Some allies of former congressional candidate Linda Ketner, a Charleston businesswoman, are now urging her to run as an independent in the race, starting to collect the 10,000 signatures needed to get her on the ballot. “Long shot?,” wrote one confidante in an email to former Ketner staffers. “Yes. Have crazier things happened in SC? Yes. Can you help?”

Meanwhile, Greene shows no signs of slowing his quote-tastic media roll-out. Earlier this week, he told a Time reporter that he was “the best person to be Time magazine’s Man of the Year.” And a few South Carolinians who actually voted for Greene are coming out of the woodwork to explain their reasoning. Here’s one self-denigrating woman admits that it was because his name reminded her of soul legend Al Green.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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