Alvin Greene, Unplugged
BY Nancy Scola | Friday, June 11 2010
The passage of time doesn't seem to be bringing a tremendous amount of clarity to the situation of Alvin Greene, the man who somehow became the Democratic nominee for Senate from South Carolina without, it seems, running anything resembling a campaign.
On Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC last night, Greene said that Twitter accounts and websites set up in his name in the last few days weren't created with his permission.
"There's just some false sites out there that I'm not operating," Greene told Olbermann. "That's something that I just got today. That there are false sites out there relating to me and my campaign. I just want to let everyone know that there are sites out there that don't have my authority."
I'd noted yesterday that a site set up as an campaign home had gone live at AlvinGreene2010.com. A note has since been added to the site referencing Greene's turn on Olbermann and saying, "Mr. Greene said he would not want this to be considered the authoritative campaign site... This is an unofficial, grassroots support site."(It's a little odd that the email address listed on the site is still campaign@alvingreene2010.com, but so it goes, I guess.)
Someone had been using @2010alvingreene, but that account has been cleared out.
On Democratic Underground, a poster under the name of Murdoch wrote that he or she
had initially launched the site and rebranded it as unofficial at Greene's direction. Murdoch writes that he or she has set up online presences on Twitter and Facebook that are ready to go should he say when. "The whole skeleton is ready for me to hand over as soon as he asks for it," blogged Murdoch. "I'd call him and offer it, but he sounds harried right now so maybe I'll wait before I call again."
Murdoch, who says that he or she has been talking with the Greene family since the big win, points to a story in the local Columbia, South Carolina, newspaper Free Times as a good source on the situation surrounding Greene. It is, indeed, a good read. In it, reporter Corey Hutchins notes that not many in Greene's hometown of Manning had taken note of him before he became the South Carolina Democratic Party's nominee for the United States Senate. Writes Hutchins, "It’s always, of course, the quiet ones."