In the Hampton Building, not far from the deep-fried hubbub of the State Fair, the Democratic Party has a table set up to remind fairgoers about its candidates for political office.
There are placards and stickers from Democratic candidates all across the state. One name, however, is missing: Alvin Greene.
Alvin Greene still is running for the U.S. Senate as the Democratic Party’s nominee. Greene still is unemployed. He still faces a felony obscenity charge. And his party still wishes he had never emerged from his father’s home in rural Manning to claim its nomination.
“That was just one more example of how weird South Carolina is to other people who are non-South Carolinians,” said Carol Fowler, chairwoman of the S.C. Democratic Party.
South Carolina might no longer have a monopoly on weird politics now that Delaware has seen a U.S. Senate candidate release an ad where her first line was: “I am not a witch.” New York came in for its share of weirdness, too, when its gubernatorial debate featured a madam and another candidate from a party called, literally, The Rent is Too Damn High Party.
But if oddball politics is a race, Alvin Greene is driving South Carolina’s very fast car.
Just recently, he snuck up behind a broadcast journalist and, on live television, appeared to put finger rabbit ears behind the journalist’s head.
“That was the victory sign, not rabbit ears,” Greene said during a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Asked why he thought it was appropriate for a U.S. Senate candidate to sneak into a television crew’s live shot, he said: “The fair is a party. That’s the fair, not a funeral.”
Somewhere, Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of Greenville, Greene’s opponent, must be laughing. That somewhere is not South Carolina.
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