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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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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