Alvin Greene is Here to Stay

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The South Carolina Democratic Party voted overwhelming to uphold Alvin Greene’s victory over Vic Rawl last week. Members of the state party’s executive committee rejected an appeal by Rawl to hold a new Senate primary contest. State and party officials have now rejected three of the four challenges to Greene: Earlier this week, South Carolina Attorney General, Republican Henry McMaster, declined to investigate the election results, citing an absence of any evidence of “criminal wrongdoing.” Similarly, the state’s election commission has also declined to investigate. And so far, none of the conspiracy theories surrounding Greene’s win have yielded any hard proof. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

A few anxious South Carolina Democrats—concerned about Greene’s rather, erh, unpolished candidacy—are already groping for a Plan B. Some allies of former congressional candidate Linda Ketner, a Charleston businesswoman, are now urging her to run as an independent in the race, starting to collect the 10,000 signatures needed to get her on the ballot. “Long shot?,” wrote one confidante in an email to former Ketner staffers. “Yes. Have crazier things happened in SC? Yes. Can you help?”

Meanwhile, Greene shows no signs of slowing his quote-tastic media roll-out. Earlier this week, he told a Time reporter that he was “the best person to be Time magazine’s Man of the Year.” And a few South Carolinians who actually voted for Greene are coming out of the woodwork to explain their reasoning. Here’s one self-denigrating woman admits that it was because his name reminded her of soul legend Al Green.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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