The Week on Politwoops: the Staten Island Clown, #CookieSelfieforAutism, Detroit doesn’t suck and more

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A deleted image from Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., that shows him marching with a creepy clown.
Image via Politwoops.

Welcome to another roundup of some notable deletions from U.S. politicians archived by our Politwoops project. We start off with Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., who deleted the image seen to the right with the message, “Even the #siclown knows it shouldn’t take this long 4 Sandy victims 2 get the $$ Congress passed 2 help them rebuild!” The #siclown refers a creepy viral Staten Island clown who is visible on the left of the image marching with Rep. Grimm. The #siclown and this event look to be related to this tweet from Fuzz on the Lens Productions, though no other mention of this event appears on Rep. Grimm’s Twitter feed.

The campaign account for Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, is learning important lessons in hashtags and selfies after deleting a tweet that said, “These cookies being sold @ area Paneras. Proceeds go to @autismspeaks. Proud to show support! #CookieSelfieforAutism” with a picture (taken by someone else) of him holding a cookie. The deletion came after 34 seconds and was replaced with a version that lacked the #CookieSelfieforAutism, which has never been used before.

On April Fools Day, the campaign account of Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., sent out two tweets that read, “The @DetroitRedWings are a superior hockey team. I renounce my @NHLBlackhawks fandom and will now root for the Wings. Detroit doesn’t suck.” In another sports team change-up, Mark Harris, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, deleted a retweet from Miami Heat basketball player LeBron James that said, “Wanna send a HUGE S/O to my former teammate Kevin Ollie and UCONN on advancing to the Elite 8. Keep it going K.O. #StriveForGreatness.” The News & Observer’s Under the Dome politics blog caught this deletion and linked to Politwoops with the question, “MARK HARRIS A CLOSET UCONN FAN?

This week we removed the many losing candidates in D.C.’s mayoral primary and please send us an email if you find any politicians’ accounts we’re missing from Politwoops. Thanks!