In an interview Monday, Hogan Communications Director Douglass Mayer said the office's general practice is not to erase comments critical of the governor, but he defended the action as necessary to maintain a positive experience for the page's nearly 150,000 followers. It's not the first time this has happened; Mr. Mayer says the governor's office deleted comments from what he describes as a coordinated campaign by "anarchists" after the 2015 Baltimore unrest. In the current instance, the governor's office was not the one seeking to stifle conversation, he said, but it was the "coordinated effort to overrun the governor's page" that was limiting debate. "We encourage an open, diverse public debate on the page, but when a clear, coordinated effort is occurring that we believe seeks to change that debate by pointing it in one direction, we're not going to allow it," he said.