As Twitter continues to melt down, California’s Capitol political class wonders where to go

Last May — as journalists, lobbyists and Capitol staffers waited six hours for Assembly Democrats to decide whether Robert Rivas would be the next speaker — things took a turn for the delightfully absurd.

Eventually, the lawmakers got hungry, and a journalist spotted a staffer bringing them food, including a whole pineapple.

The pineapple was an instant Twitter sensation.

“There was no news coming out of the meeting, it was a closed meeting, and so people just talked about the pineapple for like an hour or two,” said Alex Vassar, communications manager for the California State Library.

The pineapple even got its own Twitter account.

It was the perfect encapsulation of the #CALeg community, a niche cohort of journos and politicos who have gathered on the social media platform for more than a decade, sharing breaking news and developments, quips and anecdotes, insights and grievances about the lawmaking process.

“California is such a large state that having a medium that allows you to communicate both broadly and also to a specific audience is really useful,” Vassar said.

A community in peril

Now that Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, the good times at #CALeg may be coming to an end.

Musk’s brief tenure has been rocked by one online calamity after another. His experiment in charging people $8 for verification has led to an explosion in verified fake accounts. He has laid off thousands of Twitter staff, including the entire communications department. Musk warned Thursday that bankruptcy may be in its future.

All this has members of the #CALeg community atwitter with nervous speculation.

“Twitter was already a pretty chaotic place where it was hard to determine fact from fiction. I just think Musk has turned the chaos to 11,” said Noah Finneburgh, a Democratic campaign strategist.

Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, a prolific Twitter user, said that he is really worried about the fate of the social media platform.

“If Twitter were to collapse, it would be a disaster,” Wiener said.

Wiener added that while the platform may “drive us crazy,” Twitter is also a vital source of breaking news and information which is unmatched by other platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook or Tik Tok.

“There really is no viable alternative right now,” he said.

Sadalia King, a lobbyist who is very active on Twitter (recently curating a collection of state political podcasts), likened the situation to the Titanic as it approached that fateful iceberg.

“It’s a bit of a clusterf***,” she said.

King, who started following #CALeg Twitter as a Capitol intern in 2015, said that the community was invaluable because it made influential people, including lawmakers and high-ranking staffers, more accessible. She added that their use of Twitter often humanized them in ways that might otherwise be missed.

“That was just a way to connect with folks who are probably institutions in their own right,” she said.

King cited the Twitter account of former Assemblyman Bruce Young, who died earlier this year, which described life in the Capitol during the heyday of Speaker Willie Brown.

“It can be a living dialogue, in place of a memoir, in place of an interview,” she said.

Where do we go from here?

The question is, where does the #CALeg community go if Twitter goes away?

Several Capitol insiders discussed the possibility of moving to a platform like Mastodon, which offers some of what Twitter provided, like the ability to micro-blog in real time. What it lacks is the audience that Twitter has built up over the years.

“You need everyone to go with you, because otherwise you’re just on a different platform talking to yourself,” said consultant Kristina Bas Hamilton.

Hamilton said that re-creating the community is the real challenge for any new platform.

“In the perfect world, someone in the #CALeg community sees an opportunity and is building a Twitter-like space for us all to decamp to,” said lobbyist Jennifer Fearing.

Fearing said Twitter’s prospective demise only adds to the tumult in the California Capitol right now, between a forthcoming new Assembly speaker, a redistricted legislative map, a new building and drastic changes to the lawmaking process brought on by the pandemic.

“So many features at once of the Capitol culture are in flux, and Twitter is just now the latest,” she said.

Arianna Smith, a consultant, said that while Twitter has helped her strengthen ties to potential clients, she’s started wondering where others in the #CALeg community are going to go.

“I sort of am taking it day by day right now,” she said.