By Natalie Andrews
Some lawmakers are pulling out all the stops to win--their House
social-media contests.
Behind in the standings and just days ahead of a July 19
midnight deadline, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D., Mich.) recruited her
husband, former Rep. John Dingell, as a secret weapon to tweet on
her behalf and build her online constituency. Mr. Dingell promised
via Twitter that if his wife could reach 5,000 followers, he would
film a Jimmy Kimmel-style "mean tweets" video, reading mean tweets
about himself.
Mr. Dingell's followers mobilized, throwing their support behind
the congresswoman, who was elected to her husband's seat in
November. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and San Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsom, both John Dingell followers, retweeted the tweet to
their combined 2.7 million followers. To the excitement of Mr.
Dingell's fans, Ms. Dingell made her goal, picking up 3,400 new
followers. But would that be enough to win?
Ms. Dingell was just one of hundreds of House lawmakers
embroiled in summer social-media competitions that are only
slightly less hot than the 90-degree heat in Washington. The
lawmakers compete within their parties to see who can get the most
new social media followers--watching scoreboards at whip meetings
for the latest counts. Both Democrats and Republicans see social
media as a key way of reaching voters, both to sell their policies
and make lawmakers more accessible to the pubic.
Each party has its own contest, with different rules. The
Democrats' contest is public, with a scoreboard on House Minority
Whip Steny Hoyer's website that anyone can visit. Growing follower
counts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are displayed
in donkeys, a symbol of the Democratic Party. There are various
prizes for different categories: top overall winner, top freshman
lawmaker, top committee, and so forth. There are also many rules:
For instance, a lawmaker can't win twice, and party leadership is
excluded from the competition.
The Republicans, for their part, don't display the numbers
publicly, but they give members regular updates. The GOP's contest
this year is solely Instagram-focused--chosen because Instagram has
a large base of young, women users, an audience important for the
GOP to reach. Members are divided into brackets, based on existing
skill level, and there will be one eventual winner. The prize,
beyond bragging rights, is a set of steak knives.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), along with tweets critiquing the
Obama administration and memes attacking former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, posted an Instagram collage of a beach, a
cheeseburger, an engagement ring, a kitten with the caption
"Competing in GOP #Instagram Challenge. I've heard these kinds of
things do well there. Did I miss any important ones?"
Mr. Issa says that people can't be afraid to have fun on social
media.
"Most people don't care how much you know; they want to know how
much you care," he said, when asked what he's learned about social
media. "They want to know more about you as a person. Accounts with
a personal touch almost invariably, and dramatically, outperform
those that come across as staid."
So, how are contests going?
The Republican contest ends July 28, and right now Reps. Pete
Sessions (R., Texas), Carlos Curbelo (R., Fla.), Kevin Yoder (R.,
Kan.), Mimi Walters (R., Calif.) and David Valadao (R., Calif.) are
in the lead, according to GOP Labs, the digital arm of the House
Republicans that runs the contest.
The Democrats' contest ended Sunday, and Rep. Katherine Clark
(D., Mass.) won the overall prize, after recruiting some help in
the form of a bunny named Wally who sports a tufted look like a
poodle and has 191,000 Instagram followers. Wally gave a shout-out
for the Pet and Women Safety Act, legislation sponsored by Ms.
Clark that would expand federal domestic violence laws to include
pets of domestic-violence victims.
Ms. Clark's team also pushed the lawmaker's July 17 birthday
heavily on Facebook, just before the deadline, encouraging
constituents to ask their friends to like her page as a gift.
Ms. Clark started with a small social-media presence, but by the
end of the contest, she had more than doubled her social-media
followings on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In the three weeks
of the contest, she gained 7,600 likes on Facebook, to reach 10,900
total, and jumped 6,700 followers on Twitter to reach 11,500. Her
goal is to continue to use social media to reach people in real
time.
"What they don't want is a campaign that is so interactive--and
then you go to Washington and they never hear from you again," she
said.
And what about Ms. Dingell? Her surge wasn't enough to overtake
Ms. Clark, and she finished fifth place overall. Still, it was
enough to earn her the title of Freshman MVP.
But now that she has the followers, she wants to keep them
entertained. "For starters, I don't want to be boring," she said.
She writes her own Facebook posts and blogs, and she doesn't plan
to relinquish control to her aides.
"They are trying to figure out how I ever got access to the
password," she said of her staff.
Her husband, Mr. Dingell, is readying his "mean tweets" segment.
After his wife crossed 5,000 followers, Mr. Dingell tweeted: "You
have failed me, Twitter."
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