Back during the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign, after one of the many debates someone asked us if we watched. Internal response was, “Why the fuck would we?” External response was, “No.” It might have had a little bit to do with the candidates, but a whole lot to do with the office and level of political polishing. For most debates for higher office, they’re totally stone-cold boring and contain no new information. Just a competition to see who could most artfully chop up their stump speeches into timed segments. So let’s kill the debates.

Most of the presidential debates, and they began in the summer of 2007 for chrissakes, were just exercises in waiting for the freak candidate to say something weird or drinking games for people who find it hard to get obliterated without rules and points. In races with a lot of people, many candidates say very little and even less of actual import. They would be better served with covering themselves with bumper stickers and turning about for the cameras.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Vince Sheheen decided to a new twist on an exceptionally old trick — did the staff get high and approve this? — by challenging GOP nominee Nikki Haley to fucking Lincoln-Douglas debates. A whole mess of ‘em! And stories were written far and wide. This comprises the vast majority of all action regarding debates. Candidate A proposes something a little out of the ordinary. Candidate B says bah to that. Then so many news stories. It’s just a method to generate news coverage. As a result, most of the people who actually give a damn are those who are directly involved, and nobody else cares.

In that way, more than 90 percent of all political debates between candidates are little different than the presidential nominating conventions. No, they’re actually very much worse. Conventions have political memorabilia to buy, the occasional famous person sighting, entertainment by famous people (this applies mostly to Democrats, or to your definition of “famous”) and those wonderful hospitality parties thrown by big corporations and special interests that have the open bars and free food. Debates, even high-level debates, don’t come close. The best swag you’ll bring home is a press pass bought off some writer at the hotel bar. And about 90 minutes of sheer boredom.

Lower ballot race debates could be worthwhile, but if you’ve had to sit through multiple city council debates or watched State House candidates go at it in some back room in BFE with 11 people attending, you’d agree that the news value is negligible. Columbia would be better served by having the city candidates debate in front of the Metro desk reporters and save everyone else the trouble.

But here’s the connection between the debates and the conventions: as former DNC chairman Don Fowler taught us at Carolina, conventions never help a campaign and if they have effect, it’s bad. Fowler pointed to RNC ’92 in Houston and his own DNC ’88 in Atlanta as examples. The same goes for the debates. They’re only particularly newsworthy and have an effect on the campaign if somebody seriously fucks up, as in George H.W. Bush in ’92 in Richmond (looking at his watch) or Al Gore in 2000 (le sigh).

Discussions, like among the Pub Politics crew or the fabulous C-SPAN broadcast of William F. Buckley and George McGovern from several years ago are different matters altogether. People sitting down with different points of view and talking about them can elicit interesting commentary and analysis. And jokes that aren’t pre-scripted. Operatives, former pols, reporters who are allowed an opinion — Lee Bandy at the Dan Rather thing in ’08 was great — these are people close enough to the action to really know what’s going down, but removed enough to actually say something worth listening to.

But these candidate debates, they’re moribund, they’re out cold. It’s toe-tag time.

Democratic senatorial nominee Alvin Greene is going to another campaign-stop nosh. Time to get the cops on the phone, already. When he showed up an an Oconee Democratic Party event at a Seneca restaurant last week, national headlines followed. Because you know, he was indicted for showing porn to a college student and all, so the local Dems disinvited him. But you can’t keep a Greene man down. Or his staffers, as Dottie Sue Maggart-Feldman proved by getting into a shouting match to the point where the police showed up and closed it down.

Today, he’s appearing on radio in Charlotte — that’ll be a riot, for sure — then going to a York restaurant for an event. Fortunately for Greene and the local law enforcement, the Democratic group that was going to host it removed its sponsorship.

Event organizer Will Bigger says Alvin will be given time to talk to voters, then a moderator will ask him questions submitted by voters and reporters.

The event was originally sponsored by the Western York County Democrats, but Bigger says the organization pulled its invitation after Greene was indicted on two charges earlier this month, including a felony count of showing pornography to University of South Carolina student.

Maybe no yelling and law enforcement this time?

Democratic senatorial nominee made another of his rare attempts to leave the Manning city limits on Sunday to, of all things, go golfing. Lowcountry resident Gary Shea invited Greene down to Murrells Inlet course Indigo Creek Golf Club just to find out who the man was, if anything. The idea of actually following through with taking Greene along to hit some balls around is simply genius.

Shea said he’s not a political person but wanted to get to know Greene better. Still, he was careful about approaching Greene on a couple of subjects.

“I did ask him about the bobblehead-doll-action-figure thing,” Shea said.

At the beginning of July, Greene attracted quite a bit of attention when he proposed making Alvin Greene toys as a way to create jobs. “Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls,” he had said.

Shea said it didn’t come across that way, but “it was just a metaphor. He said his real goal is to help improve the economy, and some of that has to be done through retail and creating jobs. If he had said he really wanted his own bobblehead dolls and action figures, well. …”

Greene took off early from the outing, which was chalked up to the heat, though we’d throw it in with his erratic behavior that South Carolinians have come to expect. What would have been good — really good — is if Larry David showed up on at a golf course down there and to satisfy his curiosity, brought Greene along with his foursome. Really, the guys at “Curb Your Enthusiasm” have to get on top of this for the next season. The chances for comedy are limitless.

Last week was not exactly the best for S.C. Democrats, who had to bear witness to three different events that weren’t entirely the doing of U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene. But, oh, did Greene and his campaign come up big. This guy and his people just don’t stop providing entertainment.

Greene’s epic freakout
We got it around noon on Saturday, and it began to go viral a few hours after that. Charlotte’s WCNC television sent a crew down to Manning to talk to Greene about his recent indictment (bad incident 1A) regarding the incident when he allegedly showed porn to a Carolina student in one of the worst pitches for tail since our last appearance at Bar None. The epicness is epic, as the kids say.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The Post & Courier‘s Brian Hicks does a fine job taking on the actions of the S.C. Democratic Party‘s reaction — Chairwoman Carol Fowler reiterating that Green should drop out, and lands a Forrest Gump reference on the candidate himself.

“My lawyer is dealing with that,” Greene said before hanging up.

That’s all he had to say about that.

But Friday’s statement shouldn’t be all the Democratic Party has to say about this. The party has fouled up several important races around the state, yet still wonders why it seems to be the permanent minority in South Carolina these days.

Green’s SCDP executive committee appearance
While the SCDP has publicly come down for Greene to step aside, it still played host to him at its executive committee meeting on Thursday. Free Times was on hand for the spectacle, in which we get friendly clapping, more candidate-in-a-pod behavior (30-second speech, no questions, no comments) and more people looking to get high-end jobs on the low-end campaign.

Greene’s speech clocked in at around 23 seconds, which is consistent with what his campaign adviser Felipe Farley had predicted weeks ago, when he noted that Greene wasn’t going to be doing any long barnburners on the stump.

When Greene finished, one of his newer advisers stood up.

“I would like to say that Alvin isn’t being short with you -– my name is Georgean McConnell and I’ve been working with Alvin -– and we have a speech committee and so forth and so I didn’t want him to get into no debates tonight or anything, because it’s really not fair since he’s been very cooperative with us.”

McConnell works at the University of South Carolina School of Music in the Center for Southern African-American Music as the gospel music ambassador. She went on to describe Greene as a quick learner and a knowledgeable person.

“So I think, in a very short time, you’re going to be seeing a very different Alvin Greene,” she said.

A-ha. Nope, looks like more of the same. Not that we’re upset about that one bit.

Gunn checks out
While the Greene sideshow has been running for some time, the abrupt announcement by Rep. Anton Gunn that he was leaving the House and taking over the regional U.S. Department of Health and Human Services post was the absolute bomb. Gunn’s a competitive Democrat in a competitive district, though a district that would tend to go Republican more often than not. His departure brought a lot of speculation about other issues, like whether his close ties to President Barack Obama were seriously hindering his reelection hopes or that he would simply be a victim of high Republican turnout.

Either is possible, but we think we could make a good case that a ficus plant would make a better member of the House than GOP nominee Sheri Few. The consideration that no other Republican this side of the padded-room set decided to run and win the nomination may suggest that local Republicans felt Gunn was solidifying his position as the HD-79 representative. Maybe because it seems Few will run on a regular basis, anyway, it just wasn’t worth another tough primary battle.

Whether any of these statements were factors doesn’t change the fact that this is a major blow for replenishing the stock of good Democratic candidates and for overall sanity in the General Assembly.

You remember when Democratic senatorial candidate Alvin Greene staffed up with The Warren Group, but then shortly after parted ways because of his inability to pay them? That whole situation is weird enough, along with the campaign being run from Los Angeles, South Carolina and Austria. Now, he’s back with the same firm. That was quick.

But less than a week later, The Warren Group was back on board. The firm consists of Warren and the Harvard-educated Farley brothers: Felipe an Upstate lawyer and Jonathon a mathematician currently in Austria.

Farley says they’ll be handling strategy while Coe handles the day-to-day management of the campaign. He says any confusion about the firm’s relationship with Greene shouldn’t reflect on the candidate who always had a clear vision for their efforts.

“According to Alvin, we never left,” Warren tells Free Times by phone Aug. 3. “He wants us to stay on as advisers and do the voter registration. We agreed that we’d do that.

[...]

“At this point, the circus is going to be over and the hard work is going to have to begin,” she says. “We’re still on the campaign, but again, the campaign is a little bizarre.”

Free Times just owns this story. Guess following around candidates with quirks has to pay off eventually. We love having the Greene narrative around. It’s like every week something strange happens.

Democratic senatorial candidate Alvin Greene. Strange character. The interviews with him are simply bizarre, and the one done by BBC Radio 4 that we heard recently was right up there. Anybody who willingly decides to work for him has to reevaluate their decision-making process. It looks like that happened with the consultants he only recently hired.

Just a few weeks ago, Greene picked up The Warren Group and Donna Warren. But just like that, she and they are out.

Warren lives in Los Angeles and had been working for free for Greene’s campaign for several weeks. She says Greene has hired Greenville attorney Suzanne Coe to manage his campaign.

There was no answer at Coe’s office. In the 1990s, she represented Shannon Faulkner in her successful effort to gain entry to The Citadel, South Carolina’s formerly all-male military college.

Over/under on Coe’s tenure? We’re going with four weeks. Now taking bets.

The Hill released its 50 most beautiful people list, detailing the most attractive men and women plying their trade around the halls of Congress. There have been times when South Carolina was adequately represented, like when U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett made it. But this year, the Palmetto State was shut out. The South was decently represented, though, with not one, but three staffers from Alabama slotted into the Top 10. That includes the lady at No. 1, brother.

1. Alexis Latifi

Age: 24
Hometown: Huntsville, Ala.
Political party: Republican
Relationship status: Single

Meet Alexis Latifi: raw foodist, bikram yogi, jewelry maker.

Latifi moved to Washington from her native Alabama last fall and has enjoyed taking her unique interests to a higher level.

Seeing her flourish in her new city, her friends and family back home joke, “Hey, you’re not so weird anymore,” says Latifi, a staff assistant for Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

Led two years ago by the desire to eat healthier, Latifi joined the raw food movement, meaning her diet consists solely of raw plant foods. She now happily tours the city’s Whole Foods Markets, admiring the produce and shopping for recipes like raw spaghetti and raw carrot cake.

“Going to Whole Foods is like clothes shopping for me,” she said. “I’ll go to Whole Foods just to put myself in a good mood.”
The one thing she hasn’t quite figured out about being a raw foodist is how to be a good date.

“Poor boys,” she says, laughing. “I’ll get in the car, and they’re like, ‘Um, I looked for a vegetarian restaurant.’

“But I do like going places and trying the salads,” she adds earnestly.

When not dehydrating mangos, Latifi is likely striking one of 26 poses in a 105-degree room as part of her bikram yoga regimen. She attends class at a Dupont Circle studio at least three times a week.

“I’m addicted now,” she said. “I don’t go to things because I have to go to yoga.”

Latifi also brings her jewelry-making kit with her almost everywhere she goes. She made the necklace she’s wearing in her 50 Most Beautiful People photo, and she’ll throw together a piece of jewelry to match a specific outfit right before walking out the door. That’s how she likes to set herself apart.

“I have to have something that looks a little bit different than anybody else and that you haven’t seen in the store,” Latifi said.

5. Ben Dunham

Age: 31
Hometown: Huntsville, Ala.
Political party: Democratic
Relationship status: In a relationship

Ben Dunham is happy that his life is finally back to normal. Sort of.

In October 2009, the 31-year-old environmental adviser to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) met a certain young actress who was visiting Capitol Hill. And the rest, as they say, is national tabloid news.

The actress, “Mad Men” star January Jones, was in town lobbying for environmental causes when she and Dunham hit it off. Overnight, it seemed, they were spotted all over town, and Dunham’s name landed on every gossip site in the country. It didn’t hurt that his girlfriend’s T.V. show was the most talked-about drama on the small screen.

The pair dated for about four months, and true to his roots, the Huntsville, Ala., native is a Southern gentleman about the relationship, declining to discuss Jones with the media.

“I got a lot of weird e-mails, though,” he admits, “and the whole experience convinced me that I never want to be famous, whether as a politician or a celebrity or anything.”

With his soft, barely-there drawl and his honest expression, Dunham seems like an unlikely celeb. The eldest child of two teenage parents, Dunham was raised primarily by his mother, Susan Parlamento, and grandparents Vernon and Peggy Dunham.

Dunham walked onto the University of Mississippi’s football team and went on to earn a law degree at the University of North Carolina. His interest in environmental law is personal — his grandfather died in 2009 of lymphoma after a lifetime spent working on construction sites.

On a lighter note, asked about his dating history, Dunham says it goes pretty far back.

“My first girlfriend was in preschool, a German girl named Schotzy,” he says. “I’ve always loved women.”

Dunham flashes a perfect smile, lighting up his blue eyes. That sounds like good news for women, too.

6. Nichelle Williams

Age: 30
Hometown: Mobile, Ala.
Political party: Democratic
Relationship status: Boyfriend

Nichelle Williams was destined for beauty.

Her mother, a “Star Trek” fan, named her after Nichelle Nichols, the stunning actress who played Lt. Uhura aboard the Starship Enterprise.

Williams is as beautiful as her namesake but leads a more down-to-earth life as legislative counsel to Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.).

She has been in a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend for three years (he’s still in Alabama), and she considers herself a homebody.

“I don’t have too much of a social life,” she admits. “I do a lot of reading. If I’m not at work, I’m at home.”

She likes to chat on the phone with friends and her close-knit family. Growing up, she bonded with her mom in a house full of four brothers.

“I was very much a tomboy, trying to keep up with my brothers,” who were all involved in sports such as football, tennis and cross-country, she says.

Williams earned a master’s in public health at Emory University and a law degree at the University of Alabama.

Before taking a job with Davis a year and a half ago, she worked at Alabama Appleseed, a social justice advocacy group.

In that job, she says, she saw firsthand the barriers that make it tough for poor people and minorities to get decent healthcare. Williams says the healthcare bill passed by Congress this year is a good first step but far from perfect.

She hopes to switch to healthcare policy but wonders how much longer she can stick it out in Washington. Williams misses home sweet home.

“I think all the talent leaves Alabama.” she says. “It’s my home.”

Commemorative resolutions are an every day part of life in an American legislative body. Usually they move through rather quickly and that’s that. In Congress, when a sports team wins a national championship, the usual thing to do is to have a resolution sponsored by a few people, there’s a little speechifying and the matter’s done. But not recently in the U.S. Senate, and not for the national champion Carolina baseball team.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham sponsored the legislation in the upper chamber to congratulate the team after a similar resolution, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, made it out of the House (though the AP article mentions a “nasty floor fight”). But this one isn’t moving, not one bit.

“It’s one thing to not be able to do the big things which are hard, like reforming Social Security,” Graham said. “But it’s quite another to not be able to do the simple, appropriate and easy things like recognizing a team for winning a national championship.”

As the article points out, other resolutions from other senators are holed up in committee too, for the reason that it appears a small number of legislators seem to have some PTSD from getting picked last for kickball and are taking it out on successful athletes. Measures recognizing Alabama‘s 2009 football national championship (Richard Shelby, R-Ala.), Duke’s 2009-2010 men’s basketball national championship (Richard Burr, R-N.C.) and LSU’s 2009 baseball national championship (Mary Landrieu, D-La.) are going nowhere, along with resolutions dealing with NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson and S.C. golfer Lucas Glover.

Really. There’s petty, and then there’s OMG SOOOOOOOOO PETTY.

Just as we were thinking of doing a piece on “Cat on a leash,” here comes “Graham in a noose.” You know, abortion’s been a hot topic for decades, and in the last century there was a time in which people could get arrested for advocating birth control. And in the grand scheme of things, we’re still dealing with the issue on a regular basis, though the fire has died down since the ’80s. So, what do you do if you’re a nationally-known pro-life activist? You go to South Carolina and hang a Republican U.S. senator in effigy.

That’s what Randall Terry did Monday. WYFF was all over the story, which is so absurd that you’d have to see pictures, which makes the station’s small yet apropos photo gallery so perfect. The way the story goes, Terry got his panties in a bunch over U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham voting to confirm Elana Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. And he’s going around the country doing “skits” for his television show involving senators who voted for confirmation. Naturally, Terry shows up in Greenville and strings up Graham in effigy, putting a picture of his face on the “head.”

In his second act, he strung up a pinata with Graham’s picture on it, and whacks were taken until — and this is the best part — the innards came running out. Was it tasty candy? Upstate peaches? Old “Gary Bauer for President” buttons? Why, no. Just a bunch of tiny plastic babies. But here’s the kicker of it all — Terry’s shenanigans don’t seem to have made national news until he came here, the nation’s humid greenhouse of crazy.

Not to get all Brad Wartheny, but this shit has to stop, and by that we mean the doctrinaire attitude that just seems to be getting worse. We wouldn’t be surprised if the whips actually start carrying whips now. From Democratic efforts in 2006 to Republican actions this year, it seems that unless you’re a robot for the activist base of your party, you’re on the hot seat.

Democratic senatorial candidate Alvin Greene has obfuscated on more than one issue since he won the primary to take on U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint. Thursday, news of more than one subject has helped clear up exactly what Greene is doing and what he has done, perhaps lifting the veil on the enigma from Manning. Those were who is helping his campaign and what exactly went down during his military service. True to form, neither story is generic or boring.

According to a story in the Free Times, Greene has hired a consulting firm out of Los Angeles called The Warren Group, headed up by Donna Warren, who sued the CIA and the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly being complicit in introduction and distribution of crack through poor neighborhoods in L.A. Greene’s man on the ground in Manning from the firm is a gentleman named Felipe Farley, a patent attorney and graduate of Harvard Law. So there’s that. It’ll be interesting to see where the money is coming from to pay these people and how much is going out.

As far as Greene’s military history goes, the Associated Press ran with a story that pretty much describes Greene as little else than a total fuckup. After serving in the Air National Guard for seven years, he went active duty in the U.S. Air Force for three years.

In a performance report two years later, Greene received adequate marks for performing tasks assigned to him, complying with standards and training requirements. But Greene’s reviewer marked him as an ineffective leader who lacked organization and was “unable to express thoughts clearly.”

Greene is “usually capable of handling mundane tasks with supervision” but is “not able to adapt to any changes to daily routine,” the reviewer wrote, also noting that Greene had received multiple disciplinary actions for failing to perform his duties.

Greene was also written up for posting sensitive information on a military Internet server, a mistake that resulted in a three-day work stoppage. Records showed Greene was kept at Shaw while the rest of his unit deployed after leadership “recognized his inability to contribute to the wartime mission.”

There’s really not much more to take away from that. He left the Air Force, joined the Army National Guard and then active duty Army before being forced out. The guy could barely do anything without being led by the hand. That’s sad. But hey, that’s only one side of the story. What’s Greene got to say? He’s got to have some great defense, right? Some way of explaining all of this?

“Those folks are ridiculous and yes and they only promote the terrorists and the communists and I haven’t gotten a promotion since I graduated from college and that’s just what I’m saying,” Greene said. “This is why we need to have things done differently. This is why we need to overhaul the military. We need get rid of these folks.”

Just another day for Team Greene.