Some Trouble on the Heller Twitter Front, Part III

After 11 weeks or so of what had now become the Great Dean Heller Twitter Experiment, I began to wonder if anybody would ever really notice and pull the plug.  Or even just ask about it.

There were local TV reporters, fellow Congressmen and political activists all following my Heller account, but it seemed to be flying completely under the radar.  I guess it's true that nobody really reads the people they follow.  Eventually, though, someone would.

Heller's Tweets Panned

After the Tweet Congress mention, a few bloggers had picked up that Heller was on Twitter and made some brief mentions of it.  The media as a whole, though, hadn't noticed until the Las Vegas Sun's Lisa Mascaro penned a March 18, 2009, article titled "Outraged or Dull, Politicians Atwitter."  She looked at Nevada's contribution.  The review wasn't so good.

Heller mainly limits his tweets to posting a few news releases and official statements, not quite the spirit of Twitter.

The Ensign Message

Things were back to running along rather smoothly as one, Heller wasn't cranking out a lot of press releases at the time, and two, nobody had apparently noticed the Sun's diss.  But that would change on May 19, 2009, when I received the first direct message to Heller.  It was from Nevada U.S. Senator John Ensign.  Well, actually his staff.

JohnEnsign: Is this Congressman Heller, or someone else behind this account? -Staff

What to do?  I could always lie and respond with a "Yes, and say hi to John for me" or just ignore it and hope it wouldn't go anywhere.  But then I thought, "Why not do what politicians always do so well."

So I answered the question by not really answering the question.  I wrote something along the lines of "Just getting our Twitter feet wet.  Still have a ways to go to match the Senator, though."  Technically true, it was my first Twitter account, and I figured the compliment might help.  I think it did.

Tomorrow:  The end is near and some non-Heller tweets.

Part 1: My Great Dean Heller Twitter Experiment Comes to an End
Part 2: More of the Great Dean Heller Twitter Experiment
Part 4: How the Heller Twitter Experiment Was Discovered

The Google cache of the Original Congressman Dean Heller Twitter account.