We’ve been keeping a close eye on the accusations and rumors coming out of South Carolina in recent days following a very strange Democratic primary. It’s far from clear whether any of the mysterious candidates who performed better than expected for being little known were “plants” or part of any larger plot.
Today House Majority Whip James Clyburn accused all three candidates he’s already suggested were “plants” of hiring Stonewall Strategies, a firm run by former aide to Rep. Joe Wilson. On MSNBC today charged that Democratic candidates Gregory Brown, Ben Frasier in SC-01 and Alvin Greene in the Senate race had employed Stonewall. Preston Grisham, who runs Stonewall, flatly denied the charge in an interview.
Clyburn (D-SC) has spent the last several days suggesting that something was amiss during Tuesday’s primary, during which Frasier and Greene prevailed despite a lack of campaigning and no recognition from the state Democratic party.
Clyburn has jumped on our investigation digging up that his own primary challenger, Brown, paid a Republican consulting firm nearly $24,000 on “marketing” expenses. Clyburn said that’s evidence there’s something shady going on since the firm Stonewall Strategies is run by Grisham, who until last fall was a longtime political operative for Wilson (R-SC).
Clyburn said Wilson’s “campaign manager was managing my opponent’s campaign,” an inaccurate detail.
“So they were running my opponent’s campaign, Alvin Greene’s campaign and Ben Frasier’s campaign down in the 1st district. The only federal campaigns on the ballot—those were being run out of the same shop, and that shop was Joe Wilson’s campaign manager and former staffer on his congressional staff. So that’s all the proof I need,” Clyburn said.
We asked Clyburn’s office for more details, or campaign filings, that might back up his new claim. We’ll update if we hear back.
Clyburn pointed out that he’d asked the House to censure Wilson last fall for disrupting President Obama’s address to Congress with a shout of “You lie!”
Reached today for a phone interview, Grisham told me that Clyburn was wrong. “I had never heard of Alvin Greene until Thursday after the primary,” Grisham said. He said he didn’t know who Frasier was. Frasier and Greene have not filed campaign finance reports so there is no way to check what they spent money on during the campaign.
“I haven’t heard Clyburn use my name or my firm’s name, he’s kept it very generic,” Grisham said. “All of these things are news to me.”
Watch Clyburn’s accusation:
Kyle Leighton contributed to this report.
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