The South Carolina Democratic primary result is really bizarre. Josh Marshall asks if something is fishy:
Greene’s unemployed, recently out of the Army and living with his parents, and has an outstanding felony arrest from last year for showing obscene photos to a college student.
Back in March he walked into the state Democratic headquarters with a personal check for $10,400. That’s the filing fee. The party people said they weren’t allowed to take a personal check. It had to come from a campaign account. So a few hours later he came back with a check from a campaign account. And he signed up to run.
And that was it. He held no events. He never campaigned. He didn’t go to the convention. He never filed any money filings. He never raised any money. He didn’t even have a website. In other words, by every conceivable measure he never actually mounted a campaign. When Mother Jones called him shortly after his victory and asked him what was up, he seemed hard pressed to explain why he had run or really anything about what was going on other than to insist that the ten grand was his money.
…
But still. I know people don’t have to be professional politicians to run for office. They don’t have to have conventional political ideas — to put it mildly. But when an out-of-work guy with no political background at all and no stated reason why he chose to run puts up ten grand to run in an election I’d really expect him to have some reason for running — some strong political beliefs, maybe some crankish political beliefs, the desire for exposure or self-promotion, something. But here, nothing. None of those seem to apply. That doesn’t make sense to me.
The working hypothesis right now is that Greene’s name was first on the ballot and the voters didn’t know who either candidate is. I guess that’s as good an explanation as any. This guy is really strange though. He’s facing pressure to withdraw from the race and gave a rather bizarre interview with ABC News.
I’m sure the Democrats that pulled the level for Greene yesterday are having a severe case of buyer’s remorse.