Flowers winning the twitter primary?

Filed in National by on August 2, 2014

From reformed GOPer, Mike Stafford’s FB Page:

Is the size of a candidate’s Twitter following a good gauge of their electability? If so, as of right now Flowers has more than 800, Barney just passed 400, and Ken Simpler, well, at 73 I’m not really feeling the whole populist groundswell thing. Meanwhile, Sher Valenzuela’s Twitter strategy is to be invisible- I guess that makes her the stealth candidate.

Obviously an incumbent is going to have a built in twitter base. So this isn’t exactly scientific, but primaries are all about turnout, so if a candidate is having trouble attracting people to their twitter account, how much harder will it be to attract them to the polls?

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Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (23)

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  1. John Manifold says:

    Another Literary Digest poll.

  2. Anny says:

    Is there really winning the Twitter war when you have less than a thousand followers on all ends? I mean Grumpy Cat has 230,000+ followers, does it really mean anything?

  3. jason330 says:

    I’m getting the feeling that Barney thought Flowers was going to be a bit of a pushover.

  4. puck says:

    I figure Barney was told Flowers was vulnerable and he (Barney) would be getting a lot of help in his campaign. But Flowers’s vulnerability isn’t really a thing outside the bubble. Barney probably will be getting a lot of cash very soon, but what is he going to do with it?

    Negative ads? Tom Wagner took the wind out of a negative campaign based on travel expenses. Whatever you think of Wagner’s report, it is out there and very quotable. Flowers would have a field day with counter-attacks. A negative campaign would have blowback.

    That leaves the likelihood of a nonstop positive radio ad campaign full of buzzwords about character and narratives of Barney’s military service. I can hardly wait.

  5. cassandra_m says:

    So this is the progressive thing? Counting Twitter followers? I’m just trying to keep up here. Sheesh.

  6. Jason330 says:

    I wouldn’t call Stafford a progressive. I just thought it was interesting. A horse race blurb.

    I guess I’ve seen a lot of Flowers campaign ephemera (postcards, billboards, etc) and nothing from Barney. Flowers claims to have made $44 million for the state. That strikes me as an odd claim but I don’t see it being challenged.

  7. In The Know says:

    Not too surprising that Barney hasn’t challenged the “I made $44 million” claim because he can’t prove that he made a penny for anybody other than himself.
    But he certainly could go back and say “my masters Tom and Jack made $XXX million for the state, far more than the incumbent, and I would benefit from their mentoring in showing me how to do it.”
    Now, I haven’t done the research, or the math, and I suspect that no one else has either, but, given how low interest rates have been over the past four years, I don’t think it would be too hard for someone to run the numbers and try to make the case.
    And, what the hell, if it turns out that Chip’s performance is better than his predecessors, well, maybe he’s better at investing than he is at filling out forms and saving receipts.

  8. RunCV79 says:

    @Jason330 – Aren’t there 4 or 5 times more people on Facebook than there are on Twitter? If so, shouldn’t those stats be considered by Stafford?

    Looks like Simpler has more ‘likes’ on his page than anyone else in the Treasurer’s race, including Flowers who had at least a 4 year jump on the field.

    Knowing that, does Stafford now ‘feel the whole populist groundswell thing’?

  9. John Young says:

    Is that 44million on 2B in 4 years? If so, check the yield.

  10. puck says:

    Flowers made the claim and presumably has some basis for it, however debatable. I am pretty motivated but even I have not put the time into figuring it out for sure. To disprove or attack Flowers’s position, an opponent now has to base a major portion of his campaign on an eye-glazing technical accounting argument, and prevail not only on paper but in public opinion. In politics that is a losing position. The candidate who runs the more positive and aspirational campaign generally wins. Barney’s only chance is to stay positive, which might not be enough to unseat an incumbent.

  11. jason330 says:

    My mother-in-law claims to have “saved” $10.00 if she buys something during a sale. The $10.00 is real money to her. The Flowers $44 million seems like the same kind of fantastical thinking to me. The $44 million was probably coming in no matter who was jetting off to Alaska.

  12. John Young says:

    dissing your mother in law on a public blog…priceless.

  13. cassandra_m says:

    And it was coming in because of the Cash Management Board doing its work, as usual. Because the Treasurer has no authority to do anything on his own that makes the state any money. That money was going to be made with or without Flowers. Which is how we got here in the first place, right? And most interesting to me is that neither Flowers or his champion in the GA has ever put forward any legislation that might give him that authority. Or at least loosen the statutory restrictions on how the money can be invested.

  14. waterpirate says:

    Simpler has a lot more visibility and acceptance to date than the Cher show. If Cher wins the primary I will vote for the Democrat, who I hope is Barney, but at least Flowers has experience ” doing the job ” and now has a clear picture of what not to do.

  15. Nuttingham says:

    Followers doesn’t mean supporters. They can also mean “interested in seeing what kind of crazy will come out of this account next?”

  16. Geezer says:

    “Is that 44million on 2B in 4 years? If so, check the yield.”

    If I understood Flowers correctly during his debate at Widener, it’s 44 million on 800+ million that was invested in instruments he chose. But I could be wrong — it was hard to hear over the sound of him hammering the nails into his own palms with a hammer he calls “Markell”.

  17. Aint's Taking it Any More says:

    If Delaware had a legitimate new organization, Flowers would be put to task to answer how the Treasurer made any money let alone 40M, how the Treasurer withdrew funds from a failing bank – apparently without the consent of the CMPB. Alas we do not. Hence the public is left to do the math on the rate of return.

  18. kavips says:

    It is $44 million that would not have been gained, had the Cash Management Board been putt-putting along with out Flowers intervening. It is this gain once publicized, which created the fight in the Cash Management Board, (it shows how much better things can be done.)

    In other word, you would still have had a lower gain… without Chip. But the $44 million is the extra gain that Chip added by doing what he did…. and now can’t, because who you know, out ranks what you know… the CMB won.

  19. jason330 says:

    FWIW – If the DL poll to the right of this page is accurate, Barney will win 71% to 29%

  20. the cajun says:

    This piece is nothing but hogwash. I hate twitter. Politicians cannot speak in so little space. Usually someone else writes the post, which may or may not be, approved by the politician. Think about it. Twitter is annoying for many reasons and that’s one of them.

  21. Rufus Y. Kneedog says:

    I listened to the podcast of the debate last night. I thought it was a clear win for Flowers. My favorite part was where Flowers turned around the credit card debacle claiming that while he was vindicated, Wagner criticized the states travel POLICY and since Barney was Markell’s POLICY advisor, it was really on Barney. Flowers is a tour de farce as a debater. I wouldn’t want to debate him, even when you’re right you wind up sounding like an idiot.
    The complaint about a member of the cash policy board member appointed by Markell having been fined a Million $ by the SEC was one I hadn’t heard before and Flowers scored major points with it. Was that ever in the News Journal?

  22. puck says:

    Barney was bloodied in that debate, but I don’t know how much the debates matter or even if anybody is listening. I think Flowers is a better debater and is making the better case, but I don’t know what will happen in a low-turnout primary. Brace for a flood of mailers reiterating the main points of that debate.

  23. Aint's Taking it Any More says:

    Listened to the debate. I don’t think Flowers is such a great debater so much as Barney is a wet noodle by comparison.

    Barney’s performance is yet another reason why he should have avoided direct and public confrontations with Flowers. Flowers had everything to gain from it as his public image was splattered with incompetence. Flowers is remaking that image at the expense of Barney.

    Get ready to vote for a republican in November and just pray it isn’t Slovic Sher.