KPBS Evening Edition

Twitter Suspends Accounts Of San Diego GOP Members

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published October 13, 2011 at 12:24 PM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

San Diego Republican Party Chairman Tony Krvaric admits he launched several fake Twitter accounts, using the names of the San Diego Democratic Party, its chair, and two democratic city councilwomen.

We'll have more on the Twitter flap on Thursday's show.

Krvaric said the fact that local Democrats had not already registered those usernames on the website shows the party is asleep at the switch.

“We’re here to elect Republicans and defeat Democrats,” Krvaric said. ”If the local Democrats can’t handle registering their candidates' names on Twitter, then they are ill prepared for the elections coming up in 2012.”

San Diego County Democratic Party Chair Jesse Durfee fired back.

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“I stay focused on the end game, which is helping to elect Democrats to office here in San Diego County,” he said. “I don’t focus on playing little games or the silliness of these political side shows.“

Durfee said he tried to sign up on Twitter last spring; that’s when he noticed his name - @JessDurfee - was already taken.

Krvaric says parody accounts on the website have a long tradition.

According to Twitter's policy, impersonating another person on the site is a violation. The fake accounts, as well as Krvaric's account, have been suspended.

However, he was quick to launch a new account on the site.

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Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.