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The Cities Blog
Curtis Gilbert

Mayoral candidates learning to tweet

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Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is among the most avid tweeters in Minnesota politics. The candidates vying to replace him have some catching up to do.

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As the chart shows, only Council Member Betsy Hodges approaches the mayor's Twitter acumen. But several other candidates have recently begun to ramp up their social media activity.

Council Member Gary Schiff, who maintains an active (and at times irreverent) Facebook presence, has only 24 tweets to his name in the last four years. But 19 of them were posted since mid-December, right around the time he formed his mayoral exploratory committee.

Council Member Don Samuels and former Council Member Jackie Cherryhomes both signed up for Twitter last spring, but they each appear to have found their 140-character voices this month. Samuels kicks off his campaign today. Cherryhomes will do so in the coming weeks.

School Board Member Hussein Samatar has a relatively robust Twitter presence, but hasn't decided whether he'll run. Theater executive Tom Hoch, Park Board Commissioner Bob Fine and former Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Andrew are also thinking about running, but none of them appear to have Twitter accounts. At least not yet.