COLUMN UPDATE: @SDHouseDems run damage control, delete 244 tweets

June 29 UPDATE: @SDHouseDems have deleted 13 more tweets. They deleted 257 tweets total so far. That’s 95 percent of their updates that have been deleted.

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Just like a lot of politicians these days, South Dakota politicians may be headed for their own Twitter scandal.

It’s been two weeks since I ran my column on the @SDHouseDems tactless and unprofessional Twitter account, and it seems they finally got the message and are on the run.

Since the column was published on June 7, @SDHouseDems fell silent. Not a tweet has been heard since then (as of the time of publication).

But very recently, the account was active again. But instead of tweeting, they were un-tweeting.

If you go to their account now, you’ll find 26 tweets. Just how many tweets did they delete?

Let’s take a look at how many they had on June 7, the last day they tweeted.

Before this deletion rampage, they had 270 tweets. They deleted 244. That’s 90 percent of their tweets. They must have realized that those tweets reflected upon them poorly. 

Luckily, I took screenshots of many of them (some that didn’t make it into my last column).

Such well-crafted tweets like this one, calling people racists.

Very nice. Or calling their colleagues crazy and teabaggers, which I covered in the last column.

Last week, Minnesota Sen. Gretchen Hoffman had to apologize for her tweet. And in 2009, Minnesota Rep. Paul Gardner had ethics complaints filed against him for tweeting that a fellow representative “… seems to belittle his female colleagues (rage, sarcasm) on the floor more than the men?”

So, in a time when legislators are apologizing and feeling the pain for their idiotic tweets, there’s no question why @SDHouseDems deleted their obnoxious tweets.

Could ethics complaints be brought up against whoever tweets for @SDHouseDems, assuming he or she (or they) is a legislator? I don’t know. They were clearly in the wrong, and now they are trying to hide their initial obliviousness to public relations. 

If you have to delete 244 tweets, there’s definitely a public relations problem. I’m glad they finally admitted to it–though indirectly–by showing just how embarrassed they are, and I will gladly and unabashedly take credit for getting them to act.

Speaking of Twitter, have you followed me, @tonygorder, yet?