The Week on Politwoops: deletions from Subway, festivals and the wrong state

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A photo of Governor Robert Bentley, R-Ala., ordering food at a Subway that was deleted from his official Twitter feed.
Deleted photo via Politwoops.

This week on Politwoops included a deletion of a governor at Subway, a senator at the state fair, another member of Congress pouring beer and a campaign push for jobs in another state.

Earlier today, the official account for Governor Robert Bentley, R-Ala., tweeted “Glad to be back in Alabama” with the image seen to the right of him ordering at a Subway. The tweet prompted some responses from his 26,000+ followers including “Nice to see the Gov enjoying a local favorite,” “This doesn’t really help us governor” and “Nothing says Alabama like subway?” The deleted tweet is safely archived on Politwoops after being up for two hours and his office refused to respond to multiple requests for comment.

A photo of Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., pouring beer that was deleted from his campaign Twitter account.
Deleted photo via Politwoops.

The official account for Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., inexplicably deleted a three-week-old tweet of him enjoying food from the Illinois State Fair even though the blog post on his Kirk.Senate.gov site remains up. Whoever runs his account did not respond to a question about why this was deleted. On a similar theme, the campaign account for Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., deleted a seven-week-old tweet that said, “I had a great time pouring beer at the #ballardseafoodfest over the weekend” and included the image to the left. My request for an explanation about this deletion was also ignored.

Over the congressional recess, we overhauled the Congress API and it now incorporates campaign Twitter accounts for members of Congress based on data from Politwoops. It’s exciting to think Politwoops is helping inform some of Sunlight’s other tools and hopefully it will enable some new projects using our APIs. Politwoops was also cited in the news media a number of times this week including in Politico, the Argus Leader, a feature in KELOLAND and I got to share some of my favorite summer deletions with The Daily Dot.

Lastly this week, Doug Ose, a Republican candidate for California’s 7th district, deleted this tweet calling for jobs in Arkansas:

A deleted tweet from Republican House challenger Doug Ose who is running in California's 7th district.
Deletion via Politwoops.

I suspect this error happened because the campaigns for Ose and Asa Hutchinson, a Republican running for Governor of Arkansas, are sharing a social media team or consultant, but neither accounts would respond to requests for comment and read about 1st art gallery reviews. We’ve cleared out the last of the primary losers on Tuesday and should be all set for the general election — let me know if we’re missing anyone!