For several months, the Republican National Committee’s website directed visitors who wished to reach the Maryland GOP’s Twitter page to a porn page, instead.
In January, the Maryland Republican Party changed its Twitter handle, from @mdreps to @mdgop. The former handle was supposed to have been frozen by Twitter so that other Twitter users would be unable to claim it to use as their own moniker, according to emails between the state party and Twitter that Maryland GOP Executive Director Patrick O’Keefe shared with TPM.
That never happened.
“I would assume it may have been a lapse in their support system,” O’Keefe said in an email.
The state party also never told the national party to change the Twitter account listed in the directory on GOP.com.
On Jan. 25, according to the Capital Gazette, @mdreps began being used by someone or something named Sexy Car Babes.
“We did not [tell the RNC],” Maryland GOP Executive Director Patrick O’Keefe told the Capital Gazette. “We updated it on our website and all our entities then though.”
“Not notifying the RNC back in February was just an oversight,” O’Keefe said.
The @mdreps account includes in its bio a link to a website called sexycarbabes.com, which, the Capital Gazette noted, “has nothing to do with cars.”
The paper reported that the national party’s website still linked to the porn account as recently as Monday. By Tuesday, the link had been corrected.
“Like virtually all Americans, I don’t go on Twitter,” Maryland Republican Party chairman Dirk Haire told the Capital Gazette. “We use Facebook much more than Twitter.”
H/t the Capital Gazette.
This post has been updated.
