Ragheads, Rednecks and Greene Machines

Peculiar politics in South Carolina is a never ending
saga. On June 15, South Carolina Republican State Senator Jake Knotts of Lexington told the South Carolina Senate he is proud to be a redneck and would not resign from the Senate for having called Nikki Haley and President Obama ragheads. Haley is a former Sikh of Indian ancestry and front-runner for the Republican nomination for Governor in the June 22^nd run-off.

On June 17, Democrat Alvin Greene’s stunning landslide victory in the Democratic Primary for the US Senate seat held by Jim De Mint was upheld by the SC’s Democratic Executive Committee’s 38.5 to 7.5 vote after hearing a protest by his opponent Vic Rawl. Rawl’s witnesses argued that voting machines malfunctioned to provide a landslide victory for Greene. Greene, a Forrest Gump figure, is an unknown, unemployed, African-American veteran, who also faces a felony obscenity charge. In a brief phone interview Greene said. "They did the right thing," "I am the best candidate for the United States Senate in the state of South Carolina." Rawl is a former judge, and legislator whose 59 to 41% loss shocked the political establishment. Rawl said he didn’t have enough time to prepare his case before the hearing.

Jake Knotts said the Lexington Republicans who asked him to resign for his raghead comments were hypocrites because he had been called a redneck and no one came to his defense. He said he is a true redneck if that means a farmer who works from dawn to dusk and whose neck is red from the sun. When Knotts said, “If all of us rednecks leave the Republican Party, the party is going to have one hell of a void,” he was telling it like it is.

In 1968, the party of Lincoln devised a Republican Southern strategy to co-opt George Wallace’s appeal to white bigotry which has been the building block for Republicanism in the South ever since. I was a Wallace staffer from 1967-71 and became Executive Director of the Wallace Presidential campaign. I witnessed Wallace’s clever appeal to the prejudices of working class white folks.

In 1970, Wallace spoke to a crowd of textile workers in Alabama railing against the "Northern, liberal media who want the Federal Government to control every phase and aspect of our daily lives.”

I mean, the long-haired, pointy-headed, pseudo-intellectuals writers at the New York Times, who don't have enough sense to park their bicycles straight. They look down their noses at us and call us pea pickers and pecker-woods, lint-heads and red-necks. If they call us red-necks because our necks might be red from an honest day's toil in the Summer sun, then call us rednecks because there's two things about them; they wouldn't do an honest day's work in the summer sun and

their hair's so long their necks wouldn't get red anyway.

When Fidel Castro was launching his offensive in the hills of Cuba, the New York Times called him the Robin Hood of the Caribbean and we all know he is a Communist.

But if you had asked any cab driver in the streets of New York City or Montgomery, Alabama what they thought about Castro when the New York Times was singing his praises, the cab driver would have told you that he was a Communist. The cab drivers know this by instinct. They are everyday people like us who have fierce contact with life.

We had fierce contact with some contentiously contested election protests when I served on the Democratic Executive Committee of South Carolina in the 1980s and ‘90s, but never one as interesting as when Vic Rawl made his case for a new primary election for the Senate race. Rawl’s attorney argued that they did not have to prove corruption, but only that because the machines were unreliable, the outcome was not correct.

Rawl’s protest focused on the voting machines that leave no paper trail to substantiate their reliability. The Election Systems & Software (ES&S) machines use software whose reliability was criticized in the 2008 Presidential election race in Ohio. Dr. Duncan Buell, a mathematician and computer science professor from the University of South Carolina testified that” “We should treat these machines with an enormous amount of skepticism.”

Rawl’s protest claimed that: the machines are susceptible to accidental or intentional modification, alteration or tampering; numerous voters experienced difficulty in trying to cast votes for Rawl; that the results cannot be verified; and that inherent unreliability of the machines constitutes evidence that the election is invalid.

Big money controls politics. The US Supreme Court has just ruled in the Citizens United case that money counts as free speech. Money talks in America. If the votes were accurately counted, and the candidate who spent no money on media ads, signs, or a web site won, it would be a good thing for our democracy.

When South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860, James L. Petigru, a former South Carolina legislator and Attorney General said, "South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” Considering our ragheads, rednecks and the Greene machines, Petigru’s description still applies.

Sex and Silliness in South Carolina

In the most stunning upset in South Carolina’s sordid political history, Alvin Greene, unknown and unemployed, defeated Vic Rawl, former judge, legislator, and county council member, by a 59 to 41 percent margin to win the Democratic nomination for US Senate. The mysterious Greene will face Republican incumbent Jim DeMint, an ultraconservative tea-bagger, in November. The state Democratic Party has asked Greene to withdraw from the race because he faces a felony obscenity charge. Greene was recently charged with disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity. Police say he showed obscene photos to a University of South Carolina student. He has been appointed a public defender which requires proof of being an indigent. The 32-year-old unemployed veteran haltingly insisted he was a democrat and would not withdraw as he discussed his curious campaign with Keith Olbermann, but had “no comment” on the criminal charge.

The mysterious Mr. Greene told reporters he was the “real deal” and would “make a difference”, “I knew I could win if I worked hard, just like I knew I could win in November if I work hard, and we can get South Carolina back to work.” “I can beat DeMint.” “Education, better education for our children, jobs and justice in the judicial system are my issues.”

Greene recently got out of the Army, and lives at his dad’s home in rural Clarendon County. He presented a $10,400 personal check to the Democratic Party headquarters for his filing fee but was told it had to come from a campaign account. He left and came back soon with a check that was accepted. Greene said he got the money by saving it up in the service.

He had no campaign signs, website, or media ads and didn’t attend the South Carolina Democratic Party convention in April.

SC Congressman Jim Clyburn said it was “shenanigans” and that Greene must have been “planted” and financed by those who opposed Rawl and supported DeMint. Former Democratic Chairperson Dick Harpootlian told NPR that the alphabetical placement of Greene above Rawl on the ballot could be the reason for the unbelievable upset and also mentioned the extremely low quality of life of poor and working class people in South Carolina.

In the South Carolina Republican Gubernatorial primary contest a week before the June 8^th vote, State SenatorJake Knotts of Lexington County called Representative. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American candidate, a “raghead” Knotts said Haley was hiding her true religion from voters. “She’s a f…king raghead,” Knotts said. He later clarified his statement, saying he did not mean to use the F word. Haley led the ticket in the Republican Primary, 49% to 23 % for Congressman Gresham Barrett the 2^nd place finisher. Haley and Barrett are competing in a June 28 runoff.

Knotts is a likable former cop. He’s a friendly caricature of a Southern Sheriff like Rod Steiger’s portrayal of Sheriff Gillespie in The Heat of the Night. Knotts told Corey Hutchins of Free Times of Columbia that Haley was set up to run for governor by a network of Sikhs and outside influences in foreign countries. Knotts said Haley is ashamed of her religion and is hiding behind being a Methodist. “South Carolina is a religious community. We need a good Christian to be our governor,” he said. “She’s hiding her religion. She ought to be proud of it. I’m proud of my god.”

Knotts says he believes Haley’s father has sent letters to India saying that Haley is the first Sikh running for high office in America. He says her father walks around Lexington, SC wearing a turban. “We’re at war over there,” Knotts said. He said he did not mean the United States was at war with India, but was at war with “foreign countries. “We got a raghead in Washington; we don’t need one in South Carolina,” he said, referring to President Obama, whose father was a Muslim from Africa. Knotts has rejected the Republican Executive Committee of Lexington County’s request that he resign, saying that libertarians were taking over the party.

Recently, political blogger Will Folks said he’d had an intimate relationship with Haley in early 2007. Folks is a former campaign staffer for Governor Mark Sanford, who is a Haley supporter. On June 2, Larry Marchant, a prominent lobbyist said he had sex with Haley while they were both married. Haley has denied any sexual infidelity, and volunteered to resign if the charges were proven to be true after she becomes Governor.

Political nuttiness is nothing new in South Carolina: In 1858, US Congressman Preston Brooks "caned" abolitionist US Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, crippling him for life; when South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860, James L. Petigru famously remarked, "South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum”; Strom Thurmond impregnated his family's 15 year old black maid and sent his daughter up north to hide her away; in 2009, Congressman Joe Wilson shouted, "you lie" at President Obama who was addressing a joint session of the US Congress; and in 2009, Governor Mark Sanford told us he was hiking the Appalachian Trail while he was in Argentina shacking up with his "soul mate".

Sex and silliness, mystery and meanness, South Carolina politics is a never-ending mess.

Can Democrats Succeed in South Carolina?

"Party seeks to redefine itself" was the headline about the state of the South Carolina Democratic Party. The recent article by Gina Smith in The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina was an introspective piece that featured opinions by some leading SC Democrats like former SC Democratic chair Dick Harpootlian. Harpootlian was chair in 1998 when Jim Hodges was the last Democrat elected Governor. In 1998 Democrats held four of the nine statewide offices after holding all nine in 1986. Besides being more aggressive toward the GOP, Harpootlian asserted that to win again "you’ve got to raise money 24 hours a day". He said the Party raised and spent $2 million dollars to get the vote out in 1998. The article failed to mention that much of the money spent to elect Hodges came from the video poker industry. Hodges' subsequent failure to support video poker ended their financial support of him which contributed to his becoming a one term Governor.

In recent years Republicans have successfully appealed to a historic tradition of South Carolinians to rally around a message of racial division, religious fundamentalism, and aggressive militarism. Big money for politics has responded to this message and it’s tough to win against big money. The media and the campaign industry turn political races into money raising horse races. The media makes money running political ads and political consultants line their pockets as well. I ran for several state wide offices against the big money on reform issues, including the 1998 general election when I was the Democratic nominee for Attorney General. The races were close, but I wasn’t elected because I made an issue of how things could be if money did not control every aspect of our daily lives.

Most big moneyed interests do not prioritize or even favor our government providing a good education for all our children, promoting jobs and a living wage for poor and unemployed people, or conserving our natural resources. They want to make as much money as they can as fast as they can, with every tax break they can get. Democrats will not be saved by selling out to large corporate interests, who only want government to help them maximize profits. The Republican Party has been the tried and true champion of corporate America for a hundred years and the enemy of organized labor and better pay for working people. They have been very effective in utilizing divisive issues like race and class.


Rep. Gilda Cobb Hunter, a powerful African-American Democrat in the SC House, told The State that working class whites wrongly view Democrats as the exclusive party of African Americans and liberals. She said this has been the legacy of the Republican Southern Strategy which was a planned effort to label Democrats as “tax-and-spend liberals, to say we had no family values, to define us as the party of color “, and to spread the word that “...the Democratic Party was not a party that understood or shared white people's values.” Democrats should be advocates for racial justice. The political power of African Americans was evidenced by Barack Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the SC Democratic Presidential Primary and the overwhelming vote in black precincts for Steve Benjamin, the African-American Mayor-elect of Columbia. African Americans can decide elections in SC and will turn out to vote when they are inspired to do so by good candidates. To the detriment of the Democratic Party, there are no black Democratic candidates running statewide this year.


Phil Noble, head of the SC New Democrats said that education should top the list of political priorities. Not a bad idea, but the SC New Democrats was founded by and has been affiliated with the conservative Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC supported welfare reform and NAFTA and opposed single payer, universal health care. The DLC contended that the Democratic Party should move to the right on national defense and was a strong supporter of the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, calling critics of the invasion the “loony left”. Will Marshall, co-founder of the DLC, says Democrats should distance themselves “from the anti-American fringe”.


For Democrats to succeed they don’t need to raise all the money they can from whomever they can, or shy away from a strong stand on racial justice, or become more conservative on such crucial issues as economic justice and militarism. Democrats should define themselves by working for significant campaign spending limits and by reaching out to everyday people of all races and religions and seeking peace, justice and prosperity for everyone.