SC team making U.S. Senate

candidate action figures

CLEMSON (AP) — Alvin Greene action figures are here — thanks to a South Carolina minor league baseball team.

The Charleston RiverDogs will give out statues of the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate at Saturday’s game. Greene, who shocked the political establishment by winning the primary without campaigning, has suggested manufacturing action figures of himself could spur economic growth in a state with chronically high unemployment.

The statues are actually male Statue of Liberty figures the team planned to give away as a different promotion based on a Georgia group’s plan to build a mate for New York’s Lady Liberty on the South Carolina coast. But after hearing Greene’s idea, the RiverDogs decided to put a picture of his face on the statues instead.

“Who better epitomizes the American dream that anything is possible than Mr. Greene?” said RiverDogs General Manager Dave Echols.

Greene said Thursday the team didn’t talk to him before creating the promotion, but he doesn’t mind.

“As long as it looks good and is in good nature, I’m OK,” Greene said by phone from his home near Manning.

The team also plans to have a press ready to make Tshirts modeled on the “Greene Family Reunion” shirt from 1993 the candidate was photographed in the day after his shocking primary win.

The RiverDogs are a Class A affiliate of the New York Yankees known for wacky promotions, thanks in part to president Mike Veeck, whose father was famous major league baseball promoter Bill Veeck.

The team set a record for having no fans in the stands on Nobody Night. They tried to have Vasectomy Night on Father’s Day 13 years ago, but canceled it when some fans complained it was too crass.

Haley meets in private

with business leaders

COLUMBIA (AP) — South Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley met with business leaders, a week after calling the state Chamber of Commerce a fan of bailouts and corporate welfare.

Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said the meeting Thursday in Columbia was unrelated to the state Chamber of Commerce’s decision to stick with an earlier endorsement of her opponent, Democrat Vincent Sheheen.

Attorney General Henry McMaster says more than 50 people attended the first of five meetings he put together so people who had backed his campaign could hear from her directly.

A Sheheen spokesman says the closed meeting is an example of Haley’s hypocrisy in her key issue, transparency.

But McMaster says participants suggested the media be barred. He says it was a rare, frank exchange about economic issues.

16-year-old boy pleads

guilty in 100 mph SC wreck

LANCASTER (AP) — A 16-year-old South Carolina boy has pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in a crash that killed one of his teenage passengers.

Troopers say the boy was driving more than 100 mph when his car left a rural Lancaster County road last December, struck a utility pole and rolled over several times before smashing into a building nearly 300 feet from the road.

The Herald of Rock Hill reported the teen entered an Alford Plea in Family Court on Thursday. In his plea, the boy didn’t admit being responsible for the death, but concedes there is enough evidence to convict him. His lawyer says the boy doesn’t remember the crash.

The driver and two other passengers were injured. The teen will be sentenced after an evaluation by the Department of Juvenile Justice.