Open. But I can’t see there being a large Republican crossover into the Democratic primary for two reasons:
1. Demint is a solid favorite in November regardless of whether he runs against Rawl or Greene. There’s no significant advantage to be gained by putting Greene up there; in fact, Greene will run stronger among black voters and may raise black voter turnout even though he’s clearly a few bricks short of a full load. Democratic blacks will vote for a black candidate over a white candidate if all else is equal, period, full stop. That’s how Greene won.
2. With the hotly-contested Republican governor’s race (the whole Nikki Haley thing), I can’t imagine a lot of Republicans would ditch voting in that primary to cross over and cast a “tee-hee” vote for Greene.
Greene won because nobody knew who Rawl was, black voters are disproportionately active in SC primaries, and Greene is black. It ain’t rocket surgery. Clyburn and Axelrod and the political class are freaking out because the black voters in SC went off-script and didn’t vote for Rawl...which is ironic considering Axelrod was right there and saw the near-100% support that they had for Obama because he was “their” candidate. He thought they’d stay on the plantation and vote for who they were “supposed” to vote for. He was wrong.
}:-)4
How do you think that voters knew that Greene is black? If he spent no money on his campaign, it seems unlikely that anyone had seen a picture of him, and if people did not know in advance that he was "a few bricks short of a full load", then it appears that he must not have been interviewed on TV or radio.