What happened last Tuesday? (And are SC Dems to blame?)
Like so many Democrats (and political junkies of all stripes) in this state, I’ve been trying to figure out since Tuesday night how unknown Alvin Greene could have defeated (rather decisively, if the numbers are to be believed) Vic Rawl, a serious candidate who criss-crossed the state, spent what I’m sure amounted to hundreds of hours on the phone fundraising and talking to potential supporters, robo-called, had an active website and Facebook page, did media interviews, etc. After several days of back-and-forth, with pundits, establishment Democrats, Republicans, Greens, experts, and of course the press chiming in with their favorite theories, we don’t seem to be any closer to knowing for certain what happened. It’s still a game of “was there or wasn’t there” – a conspiracy, that is. Was Mr. Greene a Republican plant? Was there vote fraud? Did someone pay Mr. Greene’s filing fee? Did someone (presumably either connected to the DeMint campaign or at least trying to work on its behalf) paying “walking around money” to rural folks to get voters (particularly blacks) to the polls for Greene? Or was this just a victory for the ultimate non-incumbent? A snub to “professional politician” Vic Rawl? A response to the failure of the established Democratic Party in South Carolina to reach out to blacks/the unemployed/rural voters/you name it? Was it the fault of the state party for even letting Mr. Greene file in the race to begin with? Was Rawl’s campaign simply run so negligently that even someone with no campaign, no website, no name recognition, no money, no nothin’ could beat him? Were Republicans and Democrats alike so busy crossing over in attempts to influence other races (like the governor’s race, featuring Nikki “did she or didn’t she” Haley, Andre “don’t feed the strays” Bauer, Robert “gambling is the answer to all our problems” Ford, and a cast of other interesting characters) that it created the perfect storm? Or did THAT many people really pick the name that was alphabetically first on the ballot?
The more I think about it, the less likely it seems that Mr. Greene won, fair and square, by that large of a margin. Even if the Rawl campaign were run sloppily, even if it’s an anti-incumbent/anti-establishment year, even if cross-overs were higher than usual (and I don’t think anyone has proven that was the case), results like this don’t just happen. As far as I know, nothing like this has happened in any other state this year, or in this state at any time in recent memory. Yes, Ben Frasier’s victory over Robert Burton in the Democratic First Congressional District race was also unexpected (and, to my mind, a little suspicious, too – Col. Burton has decided not to file a protest, however), but at least Frasier campaigned. He went to a few events, and he took out ads in some papers. And (thanks to his dozens of runs for various offices) he at least had some name recognition. Alvin Greene had no name recognition, no signs, no mailers, no ads, no proven campaign appearances (he says he campaigned but can’t say where), and (of course) no money besides the filing fee. This wasn’t a case of a smaller, slimmer campaign beating a larger, more cumbersome one; it was no campaign at all solidly pounding one that was at least average in its scope. Now we have expert analysis of Tuesday’s numbers showing that in many precincts, more votes were cast for Mr. Greene than the total number of Democratic voters signed in that day, not to mention huge discrepancies between absentee vote tallies and Election Day tallies. At many times during the past five days, I’ve started to think, “Maybe I’m making something out of nothing. Maybe this is legit, an instance of popular dissatisfaction with politics as usual, and I’m just being a sore loser.” And every time I start to think that, the unsettling thought occurs to me that someone, somewhere, is probably laughing.
But regardless of whether foul play was involved (and it seems to me increasingly certain that it was), the question remains: Were South Carolina Democrats hoisted on their own petard? Is the Democratic establishment to blame, either for allowing themselves to be duped so easily or for ignoring the needs of its real base? In a column published on Friday, Brian Hicks of the (Charleston) Post and Courier suggested the former possibility. “[A]dmittedly there is something fishy here,” Hicks acknowledged; yet the Democrats deserve what they get because “they are the idiots who put him on the ballot.” “Are they that hard up for money?” Hicks asked, and “don’t they check these people out?”
That argument isn’t hard to answer. I haven’t read the bylaws of the South Carolina Democratic Party recently, but I’m guessing it’s not legal, according to the written operating procedures of the organization itself, for the SCDP to turn down an eligible candidate’s filing fee and refuse to put him or her on the ballot. I do know that the state party may not endorse a candidate before the primary (however much pressure individual Democrats, not speaking for the party, may exert). The SCDP offered Mr. Greene no funds, no support, and, it seems, no encouragement. As for the charge that Carol Fowler or someone else at the state party should have vetted Mr. Greene – why would they? It wasn’t their job; if running a background check was anyone’s job, it was the Rawl campaign’s or the media’s. (Hicks did accept some blame on behalf of the press for not digging further into Mr. Greene’s background; it certainly is worth noting that no one in the mainstream press gave him any chance of winning either (and therefore ignored him completely, with the exception of an article in the alternative weekly the Charleston City Paper) and so can’t exactly afford to pick on anyone else for being surprised.)
Even if the SCDP (or anyone else) HAD thought to run a background check on Mr. Greene and had discovered his pending felony charge, that wouldn’t have been enough to justify removing him from the ballot. Like it or not (and most of us like it most of the time), we’re innocent until proven guilty here in America, and a pending felony charge doesn’t disqualify you from any public function, like voting or running for office. Sure, if someone had known, the story could have been broken before the election and the results might have been different, but there still wouldn’t have been any way to keep the uninvited candidate off the ballot. It’s worth noting that the problem of unwanted nominees is not a new one for the SCDP; Bob Conley, who won the nomination to challenge Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2008, turned out to be a libertarian with few principles most Democrats could with good conscience endorse. Believe me; the Democratic establishment hasn’t forgotten about that one. The subject of Bob Conley comes up with great regularity at party gatherings. But there wasn’t anything the SCDP could have done to keep him off the ballot and out of the race, and there’s nothing they could have done about Alvin Greene.
The more serious accusation is the one made by Georgetown blogger Jamie Sanderson and in the Indigo Journal by “Jennifer.” Both these bloggers (again while not denying that there might have been some funny business) charge that the Rawl campaign in particular and Democratic campaigns in general failed when it came to voter outreach – preaching to the choir, ignoring rural blacks, running establishment candidates, and of course underestimating an opponent and neglecting to research his background.
To some extent, of course, this charge is one that needs to be taken seriously by future Democratic candidates and their staffs; campaigns can always be run better and smarter, and I’ve been saying for a while that when you’re consistently the underdog party in a state, you can’t just contact the same voters every election cycle, use the same get-out-the-vote strategy, and expect a different result. Yes, there are quite a few Democratic and likely Democratic voters in South Carolina who aren’t registered to vote or don’t vote as often as they should, but just rounding them up isn’t going to change the game. We have to persuade; we have to have an effective message. But at the same time, I have watched the Rawl campaign relatively closely (in the interest of full disclosure, I have done some volunteer work for the campaign but was not and am not paid staff), and I don’t think either the candidate or staff dropped the ball to the extent that what happened last Tuesday would be the expected result. (After all, what happened caught everyone – veteran poll watchers, pundits, the media, the Rawl campaign, the state party, everyone – by surprise, so it seems disingenuous for anyone to now say that Rawl bungled the race so badly that he should have expected something like this.) The Rawl campaign traveled throughout the state, attending not just party conventions and gatherings, but many community events. There were bumper stickers, mailers, and robocalls by the thousands. The campaign website was extensive and up-to-date. The campaign issued press releases at least twice weekly, spent as much time raising money as it responsibly could while meeting as many voters as possible, and as far as I can tell spent its money judiciously. Yes, Vic Rawl is a former judge and state legislator. But he is not a professional politician and has spent much of his life in the private sector. In a year that was supposed to be the year of the challenger, fewer incumbents fell than expected; it strikes me as odd, then, that the supposed anti-incumbent wave sweeping the nation (which actually was even less powerful in SC than elsewhere, unseating only three state representatives in the primaries) would also wash away a man who spent a couple of terms in the state legislature decades ago. I’ve seen some articles and posts that almost in the same breath blame Rawl’s supposedly “establishment” profile AND his lack of name recognition. You can’t have it both ways.
No, the Rawl campaign didn’t vet Alvin Greene. Yes, it should have – in retrospect. But given the completely unexpected nature of Mr. Greene’s win and the fact that no one has come up with any proof (aside from a single brochure that Mr. Greene showed a reporter but was loathe to part with, apparently because he had only the one sheet in his possession) that he ran any sort of campaign whatsoever, there would have been no reason (had the campaign done a background check and discovered the felony charge) to reveal negative information about Rawl’s opponent. It wouldn’t have been sporting, honestly. And would the voters have paid attention anyway? I don’t know.
I do think S.C. Democrats can take advantage of this moment to do some soul-searching, and we ought always to be seeking to run better campaigns and include more people in the political process. But at the same time, we can’t let what happened (especially if it was not a legitimate result reflecting the will of the voters) divide us, particularly along racial lines. While admitting that we can always do better, we have to affirm that the Democratic Party is the party that for the last fifty years consistently has sought to include African-Americans in the political process and work for integration and better lives for people of all races in this state. We do need to recruit more African-American candidates. But Vic Rawl, even though he is white, was no exception to our party’s values when it comes to racial equality. If, indeed, there was some plan to rig or fix this election, I don’t want the perpetrator to succeed in causing racial divisions among either Democrats or South Carolinians in general.
Vic Rawl filed a formal protest yesterday with the state party. He made it clear that this doesn’t mean he’s decided to stand for election again if the party calls for a new primary. I tend to think he might prefer to wash his hands of the whole messy thing, take his retirement, and go fishing. But I applaud him for wanting to make sure the votes have been counted fairly. In a democracy, we all deserve the right to have our votes recorded as we intended to cast them. And certainly, conspiracy or not, the Diebold voting machines we use in S.C. don’t have a great track record and, according to many computer experts, are far too easy to tamper with at various stages of the process. If nothing else, the South Carolina Board of Elections owes it to all the people of South Carolina, Republicans as well as Democrats, to get to the bottom of any suspicions about the voting machines so that all our election results are accurate and credible in the future.
All that to say, until further notice I’m sticking by Vic Rawl and Carol Fowler. I think they have both handled this decidedly odd situation with grace and wisdom, without unfairly vilifying Alvin Greene (who, if he is the victim of some scheme to plant him as a candidate and then throw him to the media wolves, is much to be pitied) but without backing down from discovering the truth because of the fear they might be labeled sore losers, as in fact they both have. Please, let’s get to the bottom of this mystery and then move on, knowing we’ve done all we can.
- KPE
Excellent post.
I don’t think more could have been done in the three months Rawl had to put together a campaign, raise funds and get out to the voters.
Even then, Sheheen, who spent an a fulll year longer on his campaign, didn’t do that much better than Greene.
Something is severely wrong. Blaming the candidate who picked up the party flag after it fell in the mud and the people who sacrificed their time, money and energy isn’t a very good answer. Vic needed a million dollars and a campaign organization of 2000 people, but that takes time. He was going there.
Getting out to meet rural voters is a great idea. Vic spent lots of time out in the country. However, there wasn’t anyone offering gatherings of 250 people to the campaign. They just don’t exist. Even the larger country conventions seldom had much more than 100 people.
There are a lot of fine, decent people working for the Democratic Party. When I was working with the campaign, I met them everywhere.
It’s maddening to read newspaper reports on the election and Greene which are longer than all the reporting those papers did on the campaign over the entire three months it was active, combined.
Why do the Southern Republican’s fear Vic Rawl (to the extent that they take a chance of going to Federal prison for election tampering)?
Judge Rawl should be on the endangered species list. He is one of the few white southern male Democrats capable of removing Jim DeMint from the political stage?
Vic’s election to the Senate would send a resounding message to the electorate: the Republican Southern Strategy is dying or dead. It would say Republican’s can no longer succeed by preying upon the racial fears in rural and poorly educated areas. The election of Judge Rawl would be as much or more a bridge across the racial divide as the election of President Obama. The Republican Southern Strategist know this and that is why he is such a threat.
At his press conference when he first announced his candidacy he was photographed standing in between Representative David Mack III and Councilman Curtis Inabinet who are iconic figures in South Carolina. There was a very powerful message in that photo. The message was that a white southern male can overcome the racial divide.
The objective of the Republican Southern strategy is to widen that racial divide. Jim DeMint is the product of the Republican Southern Strategy it is his cash cow, it is how he came to be.
If that statement is not true – why are there no Republican African-American’s “statewide” candidates in the Republican Southern Strategy states?
I would add that Vic had been invited and did attend exclusive and other African-American events including NAACP meetings that Mr. Greene did not attend. Mr. Greene did not even attend the State Party Convention.
Some factual corrections. South Carolina used ES&S iVotronic machines, not Diebold.
Also, William Hamilton reports that the “expert analysis of Tuesday’s numbers showing that in many precincts, more votes were cast for Mr. Greene than the total number of Democratic voters signed in that day” turned out to be a mistake.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/12/875375/-untitled-diary
Since the Rawl campaign’s report from the experts now omits this claim, Hamilton is probably correct. If so, shame on the Rawl campaign for releasing false preliminary results and not issuing a retraction, as that false report continues to be propagated.
Why do the southern Republican’s fear Vic Rawl (to the extent that they take a chance of going to Federal prison for election tampering)? Why may this be the only campaign targeted in this way? Perhaps that is the fallback cover question or perhaps it would be too obvious if this tactic was employed in multiple races. That is the $10,000.00 question. We do know Judge Rawl was polling at 7 points behind DeMint (at only 50%).
Judge Rawl should be on the endangered species list. He is one of the few white southern male Democrats capable of removing Jim DeMint from the political stage? DeMint is the current head of the Republican southern strategy snake. Cut off the snakes head and the snake dies.
Vic’s election to the Senate would send a resounding message to the electorate: THE REPUBLICAN SOUTHERN STRATEGY IS DEAD. It would say Republican’s can no longer succeed by preying upon the racial fears in rural and poorly educated areas. The election of Judge Rawl would be as much or more a bridge across the racial divide as the election of President Obama. The Republican southern strategist know this and that is why Vic is such a threat.
At his press conference when he first announced his candidacy Vic was photographed standing in between Representative David Mack III and Councilman Curtis Inabinet who are iconic figures in South Carolina. There was a very powerful message in that photo. The message was that a white southern male can overcome the racial divide.
Conversely, the objective of the Republican southern strategy is to widen that racial divide. If that statement is not true – why are there no Republican African-American “statewide” candidates in the Republican southern strategy states? Jim DeMint is the product of the Republican southern strategy, it is his cash cow, it is how he came to be.
I would add that Vic had been invited and did attend exclusive and other African-American events including NAACP meetings that Mr. Greene did not attend. Mr. Greene did not even attend the State Party Convention. I would like to see the photographs of Mr. Greene with prominent white Democrats at his side. Mr. Greene is the antithesis of President Obama and Vic Rawl. He is not capable of narrowing the racial divide, conversely, Mr. Greene’s objective is the same as the Republican’s southern strategy.
In addition, the election results from 8 June 2010 are phony. The returns for U.S. Senate flipped from an initial overwhelming absentee ballot favoring Judge Rawl early in the evening to a steady state 14% spread in favor of Mr. Greene. I was there I watched every pass of the ticker tape on Channel 4 in Charleston. No significant variation 14% (+/- 0.5%) The only explanation for that phenomena is an embedded algorithm maintaining the repetition of the same basic operation.
If the State Democratic Executive Committee claims that the election results were because the African-American members voted in overwhelming numbers for Mr. Greene because of his race then that Committee would be also implicitely stating that African-Americans are racist. Do they really want to make that statement? That’s the mission of the Republican southern strategist. I can vouch with 100% certainty the iconic African-Americans standing at Judge Rawl’s side during the press conference to announce his protest are not racist, they are friends of Vic Rawl and myself. Those friendships would never have occurred had it not been for the inclusiveness of the Democratic Party.
If the Democratic U. S. Senate primary is allowed to stand as is, it will reverse the gains we as Democrats have made in regards to race relations since Civil Rights. It will put us back as a party to the era of Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats. The Republican southern strategist will become emboldened by their nefarious success, election tampering will become even more creative, and race relations will deteriorate significantly.
On the hand, if it is found that one of the last standing white southern male Democrats is the legitimate candidate supported by African-American’s, it will be a shot heard round the world.
Vernon C. Owens, Jr.
USAF, Ret
Thanks, Don. I always appreciate factual corrections and very much want to publish only accurate information. I heard the voting machines referred to as Diebold brand at the press conference yesterday, but now I cannot remember who referred to them as such. In any case, problems and security weaknesses with the Votronic machines also have been widely reported.
As for the validity of the claim that more votes than were cast were recorded for Mr. Greene in some precincts, I looked at the link you cited and am actually unsure as to how to read Mr. Hamilton’s comment that this later turned out to be a mistake. Perhaps Mr. Hamilton himself can shed some light on the question: was it discovered to be a mistake that such a discrepancy existed at all, or merely that it was recorded as such? Thanks.
- KPE
Trying to get the bottom of this …
The 25 precincts story seems to originate with a Politico interview with campaign manager Walter Ludwig:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38433.html
Ludwig mentions that he has three teams of experts, and discusses the 25 precincts as well as the difference in absentee ballots. Near the end, it says, “Ludwig said the experts could be prepared to offer their findings by late Friday but cautioned that it’s likely not to be definitive.”
After the analysis is done, Rawl makes an official statement:
http://www.vicrawl.com/vicrawl/post/1002-statement-by-the-vic-rawl-for-us-senate-campaign
Rawl discusses in great detail the expert teams who investigated, and mentions the absentee discrepancy. However, the 25 precincts story is conspicuously absent.
If the 25 precinct story is correct, it needs to be reported because that would be a clear reason for voting irregularities. If it is false, though, the Rawl campaign needs to retract it immediately.
Besides the 25 precinct story, the voting numbers make good sense. They match a May 22-23 Poll. Rawl rated 4% favorable, 18% unfavorable, 78% not sure.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_SC_527.pdf (Page 10)
If a voter didn’t know either candidate, the voter would probably just pick one. If the 4% voted for Rawl, the 18% voted against him (i.e. the unknown Greene), and the 78% split their votes 50-50. You would have 57% Greene, 43% Rawl. Add in the poll’s +/- 2.8 margin of error and the 1%-4% effect of ballot order (see, for example, http://www.uvm.edu/~vlrs/PoliticalProcess/ballotordereffects.pdf), and numbers are almost perfect.
The absentee discrepancy makes perfect sense to me. The voters at the ballot box would have just picked one, whereas the voters at home could look up their names and realize that Rawl had a campaign and Greene didn’t.