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South Carolina Democrats hope a combination of enthusiasm, a desire to change the direction of the state and more careful vetting of people seeking the party's nominations will help them make gains next election. Democrats acknowledge they need some wins. All nine statewide offices are run by Republicans, along with eight of the state's nine congressmen. A Democrat hasn't won a statewide race since 2006, and the party hasn't taken a statewide or federal office back from the Republicans since 1998. State Democratic Party Chairman Jamie Harrison says the party has talked to credible, competent challengers for every statewide race...

Former Senate candidate Alvin Greene lost his bid for a seat in the South Carolina legislature on Tuesday, winning just 1 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary. According to unofficial election results, Greene got fewer than 40 votes on Tuesday, finishing fourth among four candidates pursuing the party’s nomination to run in a general election for a state House seat representing Clarendon County and a small piece of Williamsburg County that belonged to a woman who died last year.

Failed Senate candidate Alvin Greene is trying again for public office, this time aiming for a seat in the South Carolina House. Voters go to the polls Tuesday to vote in the Democratic primary for a seat that belonged to a woman who died last year, and Greene, the improbable candidate who faced Republican Sen. Jim DeMint in the general election in November, is on the ballot. In December, Greene paid the $165 fee to the Clarendon County Democratic Party to enter the race, just five minutes after the filing period opened. The special election is set for April 5....

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Alvin Greene, the unemployed Army veteran who suggested during his failed U.S. Senate bid that making action figures of himself would help create jobs, is running for office again. Greene paid the $165 filing fee on Christmas Eve to run in a special election for a South Carolina House seat made vacant by the death this month of Rep. Cathy Harvin. Cal Land, the chairman of the Clarendon County Democratic Party, said Greene entered the race five minutes after the filing period opened. A primary will be held Feb. 15 with the special election set for April...

Looks like Barack Obama now has a primary challenge. Alvin Greene, the unemployed man who ran against Jim Demint in the South Carolina Senate race is apparently seriously considering a run for the Presidency. And while many Americans may not take him seriously, he sure is. According to Politico, Greene is setting up the first steps to run for the office of the chief executive. However, he still has to fight off the pesky charges that he showed pornography to an unwilling college student. It is unknown whether he will be found guilty or not. But he appeared confident when...

Former South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Alvin Greene has only the highest hopes for his political future despite his crushing defeat two weeks ago — he thinks he will be the next president. In an interview outside a Columbia, S.C. courthouse – where he was being tried for allegedly showing pornographic material to a college-aged girl – Greene said he would sue the Columbia Free-Times newspaper if he read an account of the legal proceedings. Instead Greene suggested the media focus on his presidential potential before claiming to be the "greatest person ever." “I’m the next president,” Greene said. “I’ll...

Alvin Greene mulls presidential bid By: Kasie Hunt November 9, 2010 01:00 PM EST Alvin Greene might run for president. Greene, the unlikely Democratic Senate nominee in South Carolina who lost overwhelmingly to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint last week, called the state Democratic Party on Tuesday to ask how much it would cost to run for president. “Maybe. I’ll have to see,” Greene told POLITICO when asked whether he was considering filing to run for president. He confirmed that he called the state party Tuesday to ask about the fee. The state party’s spokeswoman, Keiana Page, confirmed that someone called...

On his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz—evidently stung by our item of last evening noting his obsession with the loony notion that Republicans are plotting to impeach Pres. Obama—repeatedly returned to the subject, mentioning that "blogs" had accused him of being "obsessed" with the idea. His defense? He didn't come up with the nutty notion himself. He got it from . . . Dem congressman Jim Clyburn. Oy, Ed. Don't tell us you're buying into theories spun by conspiracy-meister Clyburn? The same fellow who weaved another nutty notion: that Republicans had deviously induced Dem primary voters to nominate the...

Via Breitbart, the year’s most surreal campaign ends with an appropriately surreal ballroom event. I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, was there no one in his personal orbit or the Democratic state leadership who could have averted a spectacle by talking him into staying home last night? Something along the lines of “Let’s show the voters that we feel their pain by not holding any big events”? Why send him out to run the media gauntlet? On the other hand, he does seem to be having fun. From a Times piece published last weekend about Greene’s...

Manning, SC -- Democratic candidate for Senate Alvin Greene saw his longshot campaign come to a close Tuesday night. Although he gained an impressive number of votes, he fell short of defeating Senator Jim Demint. He made a bizarre post-campaign appearance in Manning. 200 people were expected for his campaign party, but only about 2 people showed up, along with Greene and his family. News Channel 7's Jonathan Carlson was the only Upstate reporter there and attempted to speak with Greene in a sometimes odd interview. As he entered the catering hall, Greene was asked if he would run again....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint will return to Washington for a second term after an easy election that saw his national status rise as a kingmaker for the tea party movement and an unlikely challenge from an oddball opponent. Based on AP analysis of preliminary exit poll data, the Republican rolled over unemployed military veteran Alvin Greene, a Democrat who won his party's nomination but not its support. Greene lives with his father and faces a felony obscenity charge, accused of showing pornography to a female college student. During occasional interviews in his nominal campaign, Greene insisted...

Alvin Greene's quixotic rise to fame will likely come to an end Tuesday. He is expected to lose the South Carolina Senate race to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, and that has Greene, who surprised the political world in June by capturing the Democratic nomination, lamenting on a few what-ifs. Greene considers what could have happened if he’d only gone negative on DeMint earlier, explaining to South Carolinians that DeMint started the recession. Then, he might have gotten his message across better. Or perhaps things would have picked up if he’d been a better messenger.

Despite being down 37 percent in the polls to Republican South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint six days out from the Election Day, Democratic Senate candidate Alvin Greene remains in high spirits — and is continuing to push his key message: “DeMint started the recession!” This morning, in a phone conversation with The Daily Caller from his South Carolina home, Alvin Greene explained his strategy for winning the race. “I am getting around to the fairs around the state — this fair season — and reminding the folks there that DeMint started the recession,” he said. “That’s the bottom line” Greene’s...

Not earth shattering, but entertaining nevertheless. In an interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC Alvin Greene responded to almost every question with, “Jim Demint started the recession, Jim Demint started the recession…” The whole interview is incredibly strange and a little painful to watch, yet for some reason I just couldn’t turn it off. And even more painful was to hear O’Donnell close by saying, “Alvin Greene, still better than Jim Demint.” Question…how low do your ratings have to be before you are no longer considered a television channel? VIDEO

Via I Own the World. The good news? “America’s candidate” has mastered the fine art of message discipline. The bad news? It’s rendered him incapable of normal human interaction. The mitigating news? That was never his strong suit in the first place.Lawrence O’Donnell says near the end that he’d still support him over DeMint. That, not “Lean Forward,” should be MSNBC’s new slogan.

Gay groups and women's group are calling on Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to apologize for comments he made Friday about who should and shouldn't be in classrooms. At a 2004 debate, DeMint declared that openly gay people should not be teaching public school. "We need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our values," he said. DeMint later added that he "would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman, who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend, should be hired to teach my third grade children." At the time, the Senate candidate apologized: "[S]ometimes...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene was just trying to flirt with a teenage college student when he allegedly showed her online pornography in a campus computer lab last year, his attorney said Thursday. "He was attempting to flirt with a young lady who had no interest in him," Eleazer Carter told The Associated Press.

Despite all the media attention to his campaign, Alvin Greene, the Democratic nominee for Senate in South Carolina, just hasn’t been able to raise much — if any — money for his unlikely quest to defeat GOP Sen. Jim DeMint. In fact, Greene has not filed any disclosure documents with the Federal Election Committee, presumably because he has not reached the $5,000 threshold in campaign donations required to report, according to an FEC spokeswoman. Reached at home on Wednesday, Greene refused to say how much money his campaign has raised, but suggested that he hasn’t filed with the FEC because...

When U.S. Senate nominee Alvin Greene accidentally and inexplicably won the June Democratic primary, many - and I was among them - blamed Greene's opponent, the Democratic Party and, yes, the media for not having shed more light on this unknown candidate. His win was so improbable that media from across the country - and world - rushed to learn about the enigmatic Greene, who went from not being covered at all to receiving more coverage than any other politician in the state except gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. As a journalist, I guess I should be satisfied; light is finally...

The man who shocked the political world by becoming a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate has been accused of using anti-gay and racial slurs. South Carolina candidate Alvin Greene is denying using the words. Now former campaign aide Dottie Sue Maggart-Feldmen accused Greene of using the slurs in a voice mail to the York County man she says Greene was talking about. The message was left for local Democratic activist Will Bigger, who organized a forum in York Monday night in which Greene spoke and answered questions. In the message, which was obtained by WBTV news partner CN2, Dottie Sue...