by Karl Kurtz
With apologies to Ashton Kutcher and CNN, we wonder which state legislators have the most followers to their Twitter feeds.
NCSL's Pam Greenberg has a list of 50 or so legislators who use the micro blogging capabilities of Twitter to send out 140 word or less updates on their activities. Meagan Dorsch also posted a query about state legislators who tweet on NCSL's Twitter site. That generated a few more names of legislative twitterers. We then looked up each of these legislators to determine which one has the most "followers"—people who subscribe to receive the legislators' tweets.
Far and away the leader among legislators is California state Sen. Chuck DeVore with 2,479 followers. But it turns out that Sen. DeVore is running for the U.S. Senate and that his Twitter page is designed to promote that campaign. Several others on the list were also using Twitter to campaign for other offices. I decided to eliminate those who were campaigning for non-state legislative offices from consideration for top legislative twitterer. Here, in order of the number of followers, is a list of the remaining legislators (at least the ones we know of) with more than 500 followers as of today:
Name | State | Twitter account | Followers | |
Sen. Dan Patrick | TX | 1,327 | ||
Speaker Joe Straus | TX | 901 | ||
Sen. Florence Shapiro | TX | 818 | ||
Del. Jeff Frederick | VA | 672 | ||
Assy. Fiona Ma | CA | 581 | ||
Sen. Jolie Justus | MO | http://twitter.com/joliejustus | 577 | |
Sen. Mike Kopp | CO | 512 | ||
Let us know if you are a legislator who is tweeting and can top Sen. Dan Patrick's 1,327 followers. Sen. Patrick has the advantage of being well-known outside his service in the Senate as a broadcaster, television commentator and conservative radio talk show host.
As I browsed through some of the tweets from these legislators, here are a few observations or items that interested or amused me:
- The top three on the above list are all Texans. In fact Texas legislators appear to be using this medium more than any other state. We count nineteen Texas legislators who are using Twitter regularly. Minnesota has the next most with 13.
- I didn't check party affiliation closely, but it appears to me that Republicans and Democrats are using Twitter about equally.
- Colorado Sen. Mike Kopp has a great background page for his Twitter account with a dramatic aerial photo of Denver and the state capitol and a nice candid of himself.
- A tweet from Texas Rep. Trey Martinez Fisher: "Speaker of the House breaks the gavel with his gavel-whacking gusto."
- South Carolina Rep. Nathan Ballentin goes for laughs: "KFC Colonel Sanders sighting! Rep Don Bowen in all white/bow tie today. I asked for extra crispy!"
- Minnesota Rep. Marsha Swails is poetic: "A crocus blooms blue...along stern marble steps... a wren flits freely" or "Abe Lincoln stares... paper flutters like white leaves ...as debate drones on."
- Texas Rep. Mike Villareal muses, "Thinking about the quality of our decision making when legislative committees meet till 3 AM."
- Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher writes, "Favorites from House Floor, Rep. Westrom stands to say 'I don't have anything to add' and keeps talking."
How is NCSL doing? Twitterer-in-chief Meagan Dorsch is proud that we recently passed the mark of 500 followers, putting us in the same league with these twittering legislators. Me? I have a Twitter account and nine followers, but I have never posted an update.
I'm guess DanPatrick followers might think they're following sports media personality Dan Patrick and not a state legislator.
MCW
Posted by: Mark Wills | April 29, 2009 at 02:25 PM
Where is the list of 50 legislators on Twitter? Is there a link?
Posted by: Nathan Benefield | April 29, 2009 at 02:30 PM