Where did Alvin Greene get the $10,400 to run for office in South Carolina, and does he have the mental capacity to run a campaign?

It seems unlikely that Alvin Green used his own money for a bizarre quest that appears to be far beyond his mental abilities.

South Carolina Pol Questions Dem Senate Candidate's 'Mental Status'
By Heidi Noonan
June 13, 2010
FOXNews.com

A South Carolina lawmaker on Sunday suggested that new Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene may be intellectually incapable of participating in the general election race.

State Rep. Todd Rutherford told Fox News that he went to Greene's house to discuss with him how Greene succeeded last week in becoming the candidate to challenge Republican Sen. Jim DeMint in the November election, but he found it difficult to decipher an answer.

"About two questions into a conversation with him, it would become apparent that he is not probably fit to answer the questions befitting a Senate candidate," Rutherford said. "If he was put into this, then it is a joke that is funny to all the rest of us, but he doesn't get it -- because I don't know that his mental status is such that he can get it."

On Friday South Carolina authorities launched a formal investigation into Greene's unlikely win. The campaign of his vanquished opponent, Vic Rawl, said it too is looking into reports across the state from voters and poll workers who "experienced problems with voting for whom they intended."...Greene won with about 60 percent of the vote...

Rutherford added that based on his conversation with Greene about his military service he got the impression that Greene could have decided to spend the $10,400 needed to enter the South Carolina race, but "I doubt it very seriously."

...South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said he could reach no conclusion except that Greene is a plant.

"I never said he was a Republican plant. I said he was someone's plant. ... I saw the patterns in this. I know a Democratic pattern, I know a Republican pattern and I saw in the Democratic primary elephant dung all over the place," he told CNN...


Conviction wouldn't bar Greene from representing S.C.
June 15, 2010
By Ron Barnett
USA TODAY

If Alvin Greene is convicted of the felony obscenity charge against him, he could represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate — but he might not be able to vote for himself, elections officials said Tuesday...

Greene, who did no campaigning, had no website and raised no money, defeated Vic Rawl, a former circuit judge and state lawmaker who campaigned across the state, in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary last Tuesday. He captured nearly 60% of the vote...

Unless a new election is called, Greene will face heavily favored incumbent Republican Sen. Jim DeMint in November.

University of South Carolina police allege that Greene was caught on video showing obscene material on a computer screen to a female student and asking her to go to her dorm room with him. Greene has refused to discuss the charge. He has not entered a plea and has not been indicted.

Rawl has filed a protest with the state Democratic Party alleging the touch-screen voting machines the state uses malfunctioned. The state Democratic Party's executive committee will hear Rawl's protest about the voting machines Thursday. It has the authority to call for a new election, Whitmire said.

Tuesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit group, asked South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster— who lost a bid in the GOP gubernatorial race last week — to investigate how Greene came up with the $10,440 filing fee required to put his name on the ballot and whether Greene "accepted an inducement" to run.

Greene, an unemployed veteran, has repeatedly said he used money saved from his service in the Army, although he was granted a free attorney in his criminal case as an indigent...