Loser of South Carolina Democratic Senate Primary Files Protest

The former state lawmaker who lost South Carolina's Democratic U.S. Senate primary to an unknown, unemployed military veteran has filed a protest with the state party.

Vic Rawl was beaten last week by Alvin Greene in a victory that stunned many because Greene never campaigned, never raised money, ran no ads and didn't have a website.

Rawl said experts who have analyzed the results have noticed irregularities in the vote totals.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has speculated that someone put Greene up as a shell candidate to embarrass the Democratic Party.

But South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson said Democrats are just peeved that the guy they wanted didn't win the race.

"The Democrats are crying foul and are trying to get a do over all the way from the White House, all the way down to to Columbia. The guy, Alvin Greene, won their primary, over 100,000 votes of 190,000 cast. Now the Democrats are embarrassed," Dawson said.

But former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, who appeared with Dawson on Fox News, said Greene may be disqualified from the race because he insisted he saved for two years to pay the $10,400 filing fee but at the same time told state prosecutors he could not afford an attorney to defend himself against a felony charge of obscenity relating to a case filed by a 19-year-old University of South Carolina student.

"I heard today that the state criminal judge is going have him brought into court to find out how he had this extra $10,000 when he had sworn to the judicial officers he didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer. That may end up being his undoing," said Harpootlian.

Harpootlian also suggested that Clyburn may be on to something.

"Jim Clyburn had somebody, an African American, run against him, who (Republican Rep.) Joe Wilson's campaign consultants managed his campaign. He got contributions from Republicans. So we see this Republican effort to interfere in the Democrat nominating process," he said.

Dawson countered that there is no need for Republicans to interfere in the Democrats' race -- either the Senate primary against incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint or Clyburn's re-election.

"Jim beat this guy by 50,000 votes to 5,000, 90-10, so first of all they ought to fire the guy who ran the other race, and they should sue the fellow who ran the race against Alvin Greene for campaign mismanagement," Dawson said. "Republicans voted in a Republican primary 2-1 than the Democrat primary. The bad news here is that overwhelmingly the public voted for the Republican candidate over the Democratic candidates, and there wasn't any cross-pollination in those primaries."