The South Carolina primary election victory of Democrat Alvin Greene (for US Senate, to face incumbent Jim DeMint-R) has breathed new life into Republican Congressman J. Gresham Barrett's runoff bid for governor.
Greene's upset over establishment Democratic Party candidate Vic Rawl has been attributed to his name being listed first. Few South Carolinians pay attention to whom they are voting for; most simply vote for the first-listed name.
"It all comes of eliminatin' the literacy test. Some people in this state can't read for squat. Got no business votin'." said Jim Stillwell, a longtime local resident.
This is also why South Carolina has many businesses beginning with the letter "A", such as AAAA Plumbing, and AA-1 Moving Company.
In the four-candidate Republican governor contest, Barrett got only 22% of the vote, compared to the 49% of his opponent, Nimrata "Nikki" Randhawa Haley, daughter of Sikh Indian immigrants. However, because his name comes alphabetically before Haley's, he is still considered to have a fighting chance in the run-off.
Alvin Greene, the large and perhaps mentally-unstable black man who surprized the nation with his out-of-the-blue win, has been accused of showing obscene photos to a young white college student, it was revealed just after the election. He has been charged with obscenity with a possible additional charge of "eye-rape" being considered.
Decent Christian folks can be expected to come out in force to defeat him in the general election, as that sort of behavior is simply not tolerated in the Palmetto State.
That is not to say that South Carolinians are not broad-minded about people of other races and religions. Local news stations are reminding voters that if Congressman Barrett loses the run-off to an Indian American who may still be a Sikh (though she claims to have converted to Methodism), the governorship of the state will go either to her or the Lebanese Democratic candidate, State Senator Vincent Sheheen.
Lebanon, as many people know, has a large Muslim population, and was the site of a terrible car-bombing of a US military dormitory. Yet, in the interest of tolerance, South Carolinians are willing to forget such considerations as their race, the Christian religion, and the deaths of hundreds of US servicemen at the hands of Middle Eastern terrorists.
There are, of course, some die-hard good-ol'-boy types among the voters, but they don't always bother to go to the polls unless there is an issue that gets them riled.
Considering how accomodating the state has been in adopting the values of recent immigrants from the Northeast, it would appear that Barrett will lose the primary, and South Carolina will become as progressive as Louisiana, where Bobby Jindal was elected.
That won't happen though, since "B" for Barrett comes before both "H" for Haley and "S" for Sheheen. As shown by the Greene race, simple alphabetical order is likely to be the deciding factor.
In a side-note, state house member Donald Knots, who recently lumped together President Obama and candidate Haley by calling them both "ragheads", was due to face a party disciplinary meeting on Friday, but it was rescheduled until after the election.
