Anthony Gemma has a new Twitter feed: @Gemma4Congress
July 19th, 2012 at 3:42 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
When I checked in on Twitter this afternoon, I found a somewhat surprising message.
The tweet from @Gemma4Congress, which arrived at about 2:35 p.m, said: ”Thank You so much for your support of @AnthonyGemma, @tednesi.”
Now, as a reporter I make an effort not to support one candidate over another, particularly in races that I’m covering. Nor did I recall publicly declaring my support for Gemma over his Democratic opponent David Cicilline on Twitter, or anywhere else for that matter.
But I did send this tweet at 1:35 p.m.: “NARLAL Pro-Choice America endorses @davidcicilline, says @anthonygemma ‘is attempting a make-over’ on his abortion stance.” And judging by the @Gemma4Congress page, it’s programmed to send an automatic “thank you” to those who mention @anthonygemma.
This may not come as a surprise considering Gemma’s social-networking skills have already drawn considerable critical attention. At this writing, @Gemma4Congress has accumulated 13,683 followers just nine days after sending its first tweet, far surpassing @davidcicilline’s 3,432.
Most of the @Gemma4Congress tweets are those automated thank-yous, but there are also job postings (#GemmaJobs), weather reports (“It’s going to be PM Thunderstorms tomorrow!”), photos (a Central Falls senior event), and of course inspirational quotations: ”Dream your dreams with your eyes closed but live your dreams with your eyes open!” Who can argue with that?
Tags: 1st Congressional District, anthony gemma, campaign 2012
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
Heavens to Betsy it is even worse than I thought. All of those 13,683 follows must be paid for as any real human would quickly unfollow after receiving that barrage of auto-tweets in their feed.
Lots of dummy accounts there with 0 tweets. Names like “Prentice Schoemaker” or “Lancelot Tewell” or “Halstead Denmark” or “Pietrek Currance” or “Honig Erwin”. Large numbers of them don’t put spaces before periods, and a great many seem to label their interests as “beeraholic” or some such thing.
I’m sure that will get him over the top.
Gemma’s electronic support is as mythical as his voter support. It is entirely appropriate his last fundraiser was at a restaurant named “Vanity”, assuming that “No Chance Saloon” was not available.
Ernie and Leo have not even turned the Cicilline machine on.
[...] then I see this from WPRI’s Ted Nesi: Anthony Gemma’s new twitter feed has already collected 13,600 followers in only nine days. Which makes this new Twitter account more popular than Sheldon [...]
[...] Gemma’s Twitter popularity has been raising eyebrows for awhile around these parts, and now the mystery has gone national. Politico’s Steve Friess reports: [...]
[...] story is a brilliant piece of work, taking from my initial piece to picking up on WPRI’s Ted Nesi’s July 19th piece about the now-abandoned Twitter handle @gemma4congress. Mr. Friess has access to social media [...]