The Week on Politwoops: a beautiful spring morning, brekkie in progress and a strong candidate

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A photo of a snowy road deleted from the official Twitter account of Rep. Jim Walz, D-Minn.
Deleted image via Politwoops.

Happy Friday afternoon and please join us for a brief review of some notable deletions from U.S. politicians archived by our Politwoops project.

Many D.C. residents are celebrating the proclamation by the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang that winter is over today, but earlier this week the official account of Rep. Jim Walz, D-Minn., deleted two sarcastic missives saying, “Headed back to Washington on this beautiful spring morning!” with the image to the right. In a more blunt reaction to the weather, the campaign account for Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., deleted a retweet of Chris Cillizza that said, “RT @TheFix: WHY IS IT STILL SNOWING?” This is only the latest in a growing collection of deleted tweets mentioning @TheFix on Politwoops.

An odd couple of tweets from the official account of Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., were deleted and look like they came from Elizabeth Lauten, his communications director. The deletions said, “Fancy H2O whilst cooking and watching tv this morning. #water #fruit @ Alexandria, Virginia” and “Brekkie in progress. #instafood #cooking #breakfast #brekkie #latergram” and both linked to the public Instagram feed of @dcgopgirl registered under Elizabeth Lauten’s name. While Rep. Fincher’s Instagram feed is no stranger to pictures of food or the related hashtags, such as #food, #gingerbread and #donuts, these deletions look like the result of a staffer forgetting to disconnect social media accounts before sharing.

Finally, the campaign account for Reta Jo Lewis, a mayoral candidate in next week’s D.C. primary, deleted a retweet of someone saying, “Reta Lewis may not be a strong candidate, but today I’ve learned that she’s a great babysitter.” The account removed this retweet after 10 hours and never responded to another Twitter user who asked her, “Why would you retweet something saying that you’re not a “strong candidate?

Thanks to submissions from Politwoops fans, we’ve added a number of new accounts including Aaron Woolf, a Democratic candidate in New York’s 21st District and the new campaign account for repeat candidate, Matt Doheny, Mr. Woolf’s Republican opponent. Matt Doheny’s previous campaign Twitter account is now a parody account and his old website is now some sort of spammy blog in Japanese with a salad stock photo, which is a shame because Mr. Doheny’s campaign Flickr account has a nice photo of him enjoying a massive salad.