Is This South Carolina Primary Winner a Plant?
Andrew Price
Strange things are afoot in South Carolina. In the recent primary for U.S. Senate, an unknown Democratic candidate named Alvin Greene, who did hardly any fundraising, had "just a few" campaign meetings, and is an underwhelming speaker (to say the least), defeated the Democratic establishment choice, Vic Rawl, 59 to 41.
The suspicion: Greene is a Republican plant! In South Carolina, Republicans can vote in the Democratic primary, so it's possible that someone helped Greene into the race, and maybe even mobilized Republicans to vote for him, in order to ensure a Republican victory in the general election. It's a wild idea, but then again, so is this interview with Greene from Olbermann's show.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxnTYPZOmK0
Let's put it this way: He's clearly not a Washington insider. Nate Silver inspects the numbers for evidence and comes to the inconclusive conclusion that "there is at least a possibility that something unusual happened." John Sides thinks the voters might have simply been so uninformed about the whole thing that they simply picked Greene because his name begins with 'A' and he happened to show up first on the ballot.