Mystery man

MANNING -- Alvin Greene said he won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary by crisscrossing South Carolina to stump, but he refused Thursday to name a single place he'd visited.

He said he put $2,000 of his own money in the race, but had only one campaign flier to show, and was reluctant to part with it.

Greene, 32, said he wanted to talk about the issues but wouldn't go into specifics.

Two days after his shocking Senate primary win thrust him into the national limelight --and a day after a pending felony obscenity charge became known -- a portrait of Greene emerged as someone who is in over his head.

State Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, and Rep. Bakari Sellers, D-Denmark, met with Greene for about an hour Thursday to encourage him to step aside.

"I'm a lawyer, and if he were a client sitting across from me, I would ask for a mental evaluation just to make sure he understood what's going on," Rutherford said. "Without trying to condemn him or make him sound bad, I don't think he would make it."

Meanwhile, the Federal Election Commission is investigating Greene, said State Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler, who has asked him to withdraw from the race.

Fowler said the party's lawyers told her that a complaint has been filed with the Federal Election Commission about Greene's candidacy, but she had no further details.

"He's just not got it together to run a Senate race," Fowler said.

Greene spoke out often Thursday as Democrats' concern continued to build over the potential damage he could do to their party if he is certified today as its U.S. Senate nominee.

The state's highest-profile Democrat, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, called for investigations into how Greene paid his $10,400 filing fee, his lack of federal election reporting and how he managed to capture almost 60 percent of Tuesday's vote without campaigning.

"Someone planted him. I have absolutely no idea (who)," Clyburn said. "This is someone's plant."

Clyburn said he learned of Greene's candidacy only five days before Tuesday's U.S. Senate primary in which he faced former judge and current Charleston County Councilman Vic Rawl.

Greene defeated Rawl, who had campaigned regularly across the state since joining the race in March, by a 60-40 ratio. Rawl won only four of 46 counties.

"Some of this happens to be us not being as vigilant as I've been imploring people to be about the political process," Clyburn said. "Maybe I should have been imploring people to be very vigilant about this primary."

Former State Democratic Party Chairman and 5th Circuit Solicitor Dick Harpootlian noted that Greene might have stirred up more trouble for himself by entering the race.

Greene, who is unemployed, has a public defender on his obscenity charge, so he had to sign paperwork indicating that he couldn't afford a lawyer, yet he came up with $10,400 in March to run for the Senate, Harpootlian said.

"All of this raises big questions in my mind about what occurred," Harpootlian said. "If (current solicitor) Barney (Giese) brings him to find out how he got a public defender when he had $10,000 floating around, that may be interesting."

Around Manning, Greene remains as much an enigma as he is everywhere else. Few people in the street could identify him.

Cal Land, head of the Clarendon County Democratic Party, said he never had talked to Greene and was surprised to find him on the ballot.

Teacher Thomasina Smith remembers Greene as being a quiet student at Manning High School, and she said she had no idea he was running until she saw his picture this week. "He wasn't rowdy or anything like that," she said.

While some people said that his name being above Rawl's on the ballot was a factor, others disagreed. "You know what? God was on his side," said Rosa Gamble, who was finishing lunch in a downtown Manning eatery.

Land's father, state Sen. John Land, D-Manning, said he didn't know until after the primary that Greene was from his town. "To my knowledge, the man never left his house for the campaign," he said.

"It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in politics," Sen. Land added. "I thought Vic Rawl would carry 90 percent of the vote. Great goodness, for him to get the vote that he got and never walk out of his house is amazing. It's an embarrassment."

Greene has no campaign structure in place to speak of, and uses the public library in town for sending and receiving e-mail. Someone using Greene's name sent out frequent tweets Thursday, while Greene spent most of the day in interviews.

"I'm self-managed," he said, adding that he started dreaming about the race two years ago as a soldier in Korea.

He declined to provide details of his exit from the Army, other than to say he was "drummed out" and that it was not his choice.

He refused to discuss the criminal allegation against him, a charge that stems from his 2009 encounter with an 18-year-old Summerville woman inside a University of South Carolina dorm, according to court documents.

Greene sat next to her in a common computer room, asked her if she liked football then allegedly showed her a graphic pornographic website, according to the documents and the woman. She left when he suggested the two go to her room.

Greene called the media exposure from the last few days good, since it gets his name, face and message out.

Rawl said Thursday that his campaign was combing through the election results, trying to spot irregularities.

"What happens next is entirely in (Greene's) hands," Rawl said. "I wish him well, and hope he makes his decisions in the best interests of his family and the people of South Carolina."

Greene said he has no plans to step aside, despite growing calls from party leaders.

"I'm a Democrat. I've always been a Democrat and I plan to stay a Democrat," he said from the brick ranch house on Greeleyville Highway where he helps care for his ailing, 81-year-old father. "The party needs to support their nominee."

The state Election Commission certified the results of Tuesday’s primary, including declaring Alvin Greene the winner of the Democratic race for U.S. Senate, Friday afternoon.

The meeting in Columbia lasted only 15 minutes and no one appeared on behalf of any of the candidates or campaigns.

Though Greene was declared the winner, second-place finisher Vic Rawl has until Monday at noon to file a protest of the election with the S.C. Democratic Party.

While Republican incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint briefly expressed surprise during a radio interview about Greene's win, a spokesman said his re-election campaign hasn't made any statement about the matter and has no plans to do so.