Al Greene: Campaign finance reform hero?

June 19, 2010   •  By Brad Smith
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Over at the Politico’s Arena feature, a reader named Art Harman makes a good point:  Shouldn’t South Carolina congressional candidate Alvin Greene be the poster boy for campaign finance reform?  As Harman notes, “he did his best to conform to the liberal ideal of spending no money, raising no PAC money, running no expensive TV ads, and in general refusing to taint himself with the apparent evils of money.  And the voters rewarded his frugality and noble refusal to accept money from all those greedy corporations and fatcats with the trust of their nomination. Where’s the liberal applause?”

Not a bad point.  Others suggest that the unemployed Mr. Greene, who is facing felony charges for alleged obscenity violations, gained a lot of votes from name recognition, or name confusion as the case may be, from voters who identified him with the great soul singer Al Green.  Assuming he would waltz to the nomination, Greene’s opponent, Vic Rawls, didn’t spend much and apparently few voters knew who he was, or knew anything about his opponent, Al Greene.  Ah, the brave new world of low spending in campaigns, where name recognition rules the day.  (By the way, does anyone have the slightest idea if singer Al Green has any ability to be a good congressman?  If voters had been correct, would this have improved things?)

My own comments at the Arena on the issue are here.

Brad Smith

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