Members of Congress on Twitter

Posted by On February 11, 2009 3 Comments

Twitter
The Electoral College is incredibly obsolete but still remains.  Many institutions in government are slow to change, but one thing I find fascinating is incredible changes in how candidates and politicians communicate.  Imagine if you could follow your representative or senators throughout their day and even communicate with them?  Well exactly that is happening on Twitter!

About 10% of the members of Congress are now on Twitter.  I've detailed the list below and linked to their Twitter pages.  But think about this.  Many of these folks are personally reading their Twitter pages.  If not personally, then someone close to them who probably interacts with them on a weekly basis if not more frequent.  There is probably no better way of interacting with your representative (provided you don't already have a personal relationship with them).

So far as I can tell, 17 senators are active on Twitter (8 Republicans and 9 Democrats).  They all seem to be active although not very followed (Senator McCaskill has the most followers at about 4,300 compared to Lance Armstrong at 80,000 and Robert Scoble at 58,000):

  1. Barbara Boxer (D) CA
  2. Susan Collins (R) ME
  3. John Cornyn (R) TX
  4. Jim DeMint (R) SC
  5. Chris Dodd (D) CT
  6. Dick Durbin (D) IL
  7. John Ensign (R) NV
  8. Chuck Grassley (R) IA
  9. Jim Inhofe (R) OK
  10. Mel Martinez (R) FL
  11. Claire McCaskill (D) MO
  12. Robert Menendez (D) NJ
  13. Jeff Merkley (D) OR
  14. Mark Udall (D) CO
  15. Tom Udall (D) NM
  16. Mark Warner (D) VA
  17. Roger Wicker (R) MS

As for the House of Representatives, there are 46 members on Twitter (32 Republicans and 14 Democrats) and the one with the most followers seems to be John Culberson (R) from Texas at 6,500:

  1. Neil Abercrombie (D) HI
  2. Michele Bachmann (R) MN
  3. Gresham Barrett (R) SC
  4. Earl Blumenauer (D) OR
  5. Roy Blunt (R) MO
  6. John Boehner (R) OH
  7. John Boozman (R) AK
  8. Michael Burgess (R) TX
  9. Dan Burton (R) IN
  10. Eric Cantor (R) VA
  11. John Carter (R) TX
  12. Jason Chaffetz (R) UT
  13. Mike Coffman (R) CO
  14. John Culberson (R) TX
  15. Keith Ellison (D) MN
  16. Jeff Flake (R) AZ
  17. Virginia Foxx (R) NC
  18. Marcia Fudge (D) OH
  19. Pete Hoekstra (R) MI
  20. Mike Honda (D) CA
  21. Jim Jordan (R) OH
  22. Dennis Kucinich (D) OH
  23. Tom Latham (R) IA
  24. Bob Latta (R) OH
  25. Ben Lujan (D) NM
  26. Dan Manzullo (R) IL
  27. Kevin McCarthy (R) CA
  28. Thaddeus McCotter (R) MI
  29. Cathy McMorris (R) WA
  30. Kendrick Meek (D) FL
  31. Candice Miller (R) MI
  32. George Miller (D) CA
  33. Nancy Pelosi (D) CA
  34. Jared Polis (D) CO
  35. George Radanovich (R) CA
  36. Denny Rehberg (R) MT
  37. Dana Rohrabacher (R) CA
  38. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) FL
  39. Tim Ryan (D) OH
  40. Joe Sestak (D) PA
  41. Christopher Shays (R) CT
  42. John Shimkus (R) IL
  43. Zach Wamp (R) TN
  44. Joe Wilson (R) SC
  45. Rob Wittman (R) VA
  46. John Yarmuth (D) KY

Bottom line is that this is great.  The more transparency we bring to government the better.

PS, let me know if you find other members of Congress on Twitter and I'll update the list.