From the Post and Courier:
Tom Clements works full time as the Friends of the Earth’s Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator and is running for the U.S. Senate in his spare time.
He portrays himself as a serious candidate trying to give voice to those who often aren’t — and an alternative for Democrats unhappy with both their candidate Alvin Greene and incumbent Republican Jim DeMint.
“I am willing to step up and challenge DeMint while the Democrats have been unable to mount that challenge,” he says.
Clements, a 59-year-old Savannah native, also has worked for Greenpeace and other nonprofits before moving here to take his current job in 2007.
He knows that no Green Party candidate has ever won a U.S. Senate seat but says few people ask him about his party label while he’s on the campaign trail.
“It has hardly come up,” he says. “I think people are more focused if I’m going to carry the ball to challenge DeMint.”
Clements’ platform has more similarity to traditional Democratic planks, such as support for universal health care, reducing a “bloated” military budget and support for renewable energy and environmental protection.
He has been reaching out to traditional Democratic voting blocs, such as the Greater Columbia Central Labor Council of the S.C. AFL-CIO, African-American groups, environmentalists, the gay and lesbian community and others.
He also is trying to make an issue of DeMint, saying he “embodies everything wrong with the image of a public servant.”
identified herself as a veteran and middle-class CFO,
“Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I have been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people. And I’m waiting, sir. I’m waiting. I — I — I don’t feel it yet … Is this my new reality?”
————— I’m one of those folk whom is exhausted by both the Dems and the GOP!
If Clements doesn’t finish better than Greene in this race, I’ll probably give up on America.
DeMint4President
Yes, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate appears to be nearing 20 per cent in the polling.
The dilema is usually you must est.
Because pollsters call it “undecided” or “other candidate”
Is there any chance of Clements getting more votes than Greene, or are there too many straight-ticket Dems for that to happen?
FROM THE HEART LAND:
Carl Kabler April 13, 2010:
Originally the Tea Party idea (at least one early formation) seems to have come from the Ron Paul style LIBERTARIAN leaning camp who is neither strictly so called ‘left’ or so called ‘right’, those who refuse to allow any ‘party’ to tell them what to think or be pigeon holed into having to accept some well planned laid out agenda that simply keeps the old Hegelian ‘left vs. right’ game alive.
I don’t really see this much anymore among the “Hollywood” ‘tea party’ spokes people, IMO it seems they have infiltrated the movement and diluted and corrupted it’s original intentions, and instead turned them into the same old partisan sound bites.
The local news coverage of the Clements campaign has really taken off since Labor Day. The media is finally coming around to the idea that Tom’s serious and can hold DeMint to a few things.
As for DeMint, he’s been elsewhere playing tea-party king-maker for so long, he’s forgotten that he’s an elected representative.
This is probably the most exciting Green race nationally right now.