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Twicky Tweets on the campaign twail

Friday August 20, 2010 | 09:42 AM

Posted by Matt Wickenheiser mwickenheiser@mainetoday.com

The 2010 gubernatorial election may be looked back on as the campaign year of the twit.
By which we mean Twitter, of course.

All the candidates have their own Twitter accounts, promoting news releases, campaign stops, positions and other random thoughts in 140 characters or less. Candidates Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell, and Eliot Cutler have been tweeting pretty intensely (or their campaigns have been, hard to say) with several hundred updates each. Kevin Scott’s got about 100 updates, and Shawn Moody and Paul LePage each have about half that.

But Mitchell, Cutler and LePage have something the other candidates don’t: satirists.

There is a parody Twitter account for each of the three, mocking them with concise and cutting tweets. Mitchell’s actual account is “libbyforgov.” The parody account is “libbyforguv.” The bio of the mock account says it’s “A parody of Libby Mitchell, who is herself a parody of herself.” A typical tweet? “Lessons for Maine GOP: The Legislature does not own any black helicopters.”

“Lepage2010” is the candidate’s official site, while “LePage4Gov” bills itself as “Conductor of the Freedom Train,” with tweets like “I have scheduled 20 debates between now and the election. 17 of them are me debating myself on creationism.”

And “Cutler2010” is mocked by “NotCutlerForME,” a “parody of an independent candidate running as an independent because Maine is independent,” and producing tweets like “The Bangor State Fair reminds me of my childhood. Because I grew up in Maine. Honestly. For Real. Look it up!”

It’s unknown who is behind the sites, if it’s one person or different people. Attempts to contact the authors were unsuccessful. And the campaigns mostly ignore the parodies.

“We frankly haven’t spent a lot of time looking at it,” said Edward “Ted” O’Meara, Cutler’s campaign manager. “In this brave new world of the blogosphere, people are going to do and say whatever they want.”

Dave Loughran, Mitchell’s communications guy, said there’s no problem, as long as the posts are in jest. Mitchell lets critics post on her Facebook wall, he said, barring any personal attacks, patently untrue comments or bad language.

And John Morris, LePage’s campaign manager, said he hasn’t even looked at the counterfeit sites, and didn’t intend to.

“The only thing the LePage campaign is concerned about is resolving the billion dollar shortfall that’s coming up in the next budget,” he said.

Hey! That quote’s only 132 characters …

-- Matt Wickenheiser

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