by Middleton Jervey Manigault, III

Myrtle Beach – The 2010 race to become South Carolina’s next representative in the United States Senate has taken a startling twist today, as a new candidate is poised to enter the race. Claiming that neither Jim Demint nor Alvin Greene is fit to serve in Congress, a box of a dozen donuts have succeeded in filing their petition to run in the race as an independent candidate.

By gathering the requisite five thousand signatures, the box of donuts is expected to throw a spanner in the works.

According to political commentator Janet O’Neal, “The box of donuts is an unknown quantity. Will they steal votes from the Republicans or the Democrats? How much appeal do they have exactly? A lot of people out there hate politicians, but love donuts.”

Bill Campbell, an experienced political consultant who helped a sourdough bagel to a seat on the San Francisco city council just last year, has been signed on to run the donuts’ campaign. TheDiscust interviewed him earlier this week to ask him about his plans for the November election.

“We expect to conduct a race based on a five-pronged strategy, designed to appeal to every citizen of South Carolina,” Campbell began. “The donuts will clearly appeal to the youth vote, a demographic set harnessed so effectively by Barack Obama in his recent presidential campaign. Kids love sweets and that will play to our strengths.

“Secondly,” Campbell continued, “donuts are holey and that will gain them a lot of ground amongst the heavily Southern Baptist population in the state, who are greatly concerned with moral issues. The third prong is our immense money-raising capability. The donuts have an endless array of relatives willing to sell themselves at schools and churches in order to raise money for the campaign.”

“We should have a war chest easily able to keep up with DeMint, the only other candidate bothering to do any fund-raising so far.  And, we already have a campaign slogan that could be considered a master-stroke. I don’t know if the time has come yet to unleash that part of our arsenal.”

Pressed, Campbell revealed the slogan was “Hot, Fresh, and Now.”

“We are going to use the words to illustrate a metaphor that our candidate represents,” Campbell explained, “the American people are tired of the stale, maggot-encrusted dough that is politics in the United States. They want something hot and fresh, something ‘now’ as it were, that truly represents them, not the special interests in their ivory towers in Washington.”

Curious, we asked what his last bit of strategy entailed.

“You see,” said Campbell, “the box of donuts is chocolate, a fact which will clearly appeal to the African-American population, who yearn desperately to see one of their own color represented in the Senate for the first time since Reconstruction.”

When it was pointed out that there was already a black candidate in the race, the Democratic nominee Alvin Greene, Campbell quickly responded. “Yes, but I thinks it’s clear by now that a box of donuts has a better chance of being South Carolina’s next senator than Alvin Greene does.”