For as much as some of our commenters gripe, there’s a reason DCist and other news organizations keep tabs on the Twitter accounts of our elected officials here. Mayor Vince Gray and most members of the D.C. Council are fond of the micro-blogging service and, Bruce DePuyt writes on TBD, they use it well.

Besides the occasional fun Twitter-based story—Marion Barry’s football spleen or Vincent Orange’s commandments to Brian Byran Bryan Weaver are a couple recent examples—DePuyt notes District officials’s 140-character utterances can go a long way in directing the actual news narrative. The @mayorvincegray account, we reported last week, was more than willing to take on people criticizing the city’s mobilization of snow-emergency crews ahead of a winter storm that never materialized.

Twitter has created, with few exceptions, a round-the-clock conversation between elected officials, the people they serve and the reporters who cover them:

In the District, politicians, journalists and residents engage in a rolling, candid and sometimes unruly conversation from daybreak until bedtime. “Everyone’s on it,” says Susie Cambria, a budget analyst and D.C. politics follower who lives in Hyattsville. And indeed, they are. Gray, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and the entire D.C. Council — with the exception of Phil Mendelson, whose staff has begged him to sign up — all tweet regularly and sometimes respond directly to residents and journalists (Jim Graham protects his tweets, for some reason).

With so much tweeting going on, it feels like Post columnist Courtland Milloy’s famous castigation of “myopic little twits” in the wake of the 2010 mayoral election for their support of Adrian Fenty was one of most errant predictions ever made about the intersection of politics and technology. Even Milloy eventually jumped on board.

So, who’s doing it best? By consensus, it’s still Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), whom we noted a couple years back is not only prolific, but authentic. “They’re meaty, and they sound like him because it is him who’s tweeting, rather than staffers,” DePuyt writes.

Also admitting he tweets for himself is Jack Evans (D-Ward 2). It seems like a few others are self-tweeters—Barry and Orange, and perhaps Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4). But many accounts, including that of Council Chairman Kwame Brown, read like the work of the staffers. David Catania’s (I-At Large) @CataniaPress is kind of a dead giveaway right in the username. The mayor, meanwhile, might have started out as Gray’s own handiwork, Susie Cambria, the budget analyst and local Twitterato, tells DePuyt, but now it’s clearly run by his staff.

Still, whether direct from the source or written on their namesakes’ behalf, the D.C. government’s Twitter accounts stand out compared to those of neighboring officials. Fairfax County officials are rather meager tweeters, as are Montgomery and Prince George’s counties’. (In Maryland’s defense, however, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s @GovernorOMalley is pretty solid.)

But back home, just Graham and Mendelson are missing from the big government-journalist-concerned citizen Twitter party. Graham can’t really add to the conversation if he’s shrouded behind a private account. As for Mendelson, though, there might be something nearly as good as the real thing:

The Twitter parody. Yes, of all the people to merit a fake Twitter account, Phil Mendelson is one of them. Martin and I discovered @CMMendo earlier today:

Yeah, it’s a little dry. But until the real Mendelson signs up, it’ll have to do. Perhaps he can sit on the @DCCouncil (another phony account, the actual legislative body can be found via the unfortunately clunky @councilofdc) with @HarryThomasJr1.

Update No. 1: Kwame Brown is behind his own tweets, he says. Our bad:

Update No. 2: Jim Graham has lowered his Twitter forcefield. He’s figuring out his way around the platform. Follow him at @JimGrahamWard1:

Filed Under: marion barry, phil mendelson, social media, tommy wells, twitter, vince gray,