Rep. Robin Kelly clears a heap of old campaign tweets

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A photograph of a big pile of yellow onions that was deleted from the campaign Twitter account of Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill.
Deleted photo via Politwoops.

Yesterday morning, the campaign account for Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., deleted 108 tweets, making the Sunlight Foundation’s Politwoops archive the only place to find these once public messages. Rep. Kelly is the latest politician to attempt to wipe away a mass of old campaign tweets and joins Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, who we caught clearing 95 tweets just two weeks ago.

Unlike her Texan counterpart, Rep. Kelly’s deletions are easier to group as all but two (1, 2) are either retweets of her own official House Twitter account, still found on that feed, or Facebook wall posts that were truncated before being automatically tweeted out. While grouping these deletions seems easy, the reasoning behind the deletions remain unknown and attempts to contact the campaign staff for comment were not returned.

Three weekly invitations for her followers to “like” her official government page were deleted (1, 2, 3), while one tweet misspelling “government” with the same request remains untouched on her @Robin42CD campaign Twitter account. Her account also removed all 10 tweets relating to a weekly web feature that is still found on her official House website called “Constituent Spotlight” where she highlighted the stories of active citizens in her district (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

In addition to Rep. Weber’s deletions, Rep. Kelly joins a number of notable mass deleters discovered through our Politwoops project. These include Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a House challenger in South Carolina, who deleted hundreds of tweets before the special election and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who, over the course of 3 months, systematically deleted 109 tweets at the moment they turned 26 weeks old.