Disgruntled and dejected supporters of Texas politician Beto O’Rourke really hate Pete Buttigieg jo Follow Nov 9, 2019 · 9 min read

So a weird thing happened on Twitter.

This sentence may seem rather redundant, but believe it or not, Twitter got even weirder last night.

Let me preface this article with the following facts:

Russia is known by just about everyone to be hardcore obsessed with ruining the democratic integrity of the United States (I think they need a hobby — maybe bird watching? idk);

Russia and the country of Georgia have strong ties (they’re also neighbors);

IP addresses can be faked, masked, proxied;

People sometimes lie on the internet (no — really);

American expats and foreign national immigrants are a thing;

Beto O’Rourke was a congressman in Texas and briefly ran for the position of President of the United States this year;

Pete Buttigieg is a mayor in Indiana and is currently as of writing this sentence is still running for the position of President of the United States.

First, some backstory.

Beto O’Rourke became fairly notable not that long ago when he ran and lost a Senate race against Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Beto is a pretty great guy. He had tons of support for his Senate campaign. He’d make a fine president and would do very well in whatever office he is elected to serve.

Pete Buttigieg became somewhat known by political nerds when he ran to be the face of the Democratic party a couple years back (spoiler: he dropped out). For whatever reason, he decided to run for president while still serving as mayor and city manager. He’s doing pretty dang well for having something like 50% name recognition.

I should also probably mention that Pete Buttigieg is gay and married to a man, and Beto O’Rourke is married to a woman. To some people, this matters, like when tweeters called Buttigieg “just another white man” running for POTUS (sure, Jan) and many people took offense, comparing it to saying Elizabeth Warren was just another white person running for POTUS (thereby dismissing the fact that she is, in fact, a woman, which is just as monumental as is an LGBTQ person running for POTUS.)

The above facts matter for the simple weird reason that Beto was going to be the young “it factor” guy who was going to be president. But then Buttigieg announced his candidacy in April 2019 and woah, Beto stans were not used to some other young guy in the media spotlight. So yeah, Beto stans have a bee on their bonnet and their panties in a twist when it comes to Buttigieg.

Anyhoo, Twitter is a terrible cesspool of humanity and sometimes robots, and in 2016, if you weren’t aware, basically (while holding hands with Facebook) caused Donald Jesusfuckwhy Trump to be POTUS. Yay.

Enter the 2020 presidential campaign season.

I’m not saying O’Rourke supporters on Twitter were/are terrible, but… they’re terrible. Granted, not all. Some are normal people like, I dunno, you, probably. A good few dozen however were behaving like your typical internet troll, constantly, and mainly toward supporters of Pete Buttigieg. Were these “Beto trolls” Russian — or Georgian? I have no idea.

Whoever these people are — Russian, Georgian, Texan, or a mix —on 7 November 2019, they ganged up and started a campaign titled “Pete for Governor” based on an online article from April 2019 in The Hill:

That same night, they repurchased a deleted domain name (all this information is available online; buyer information protection is enabled by default by Google Domains):

They created a website with Wix.com:

Then placed a tiny disclaimer in the footer, calling it a parody:

“Site is a parody and not affiliated with any Presidential Campaign.”

Then, someone who had a Twitter account since June 2019 changed their handle for what seems to be the sole purpose of trolling Pete Buttigieg supporters (which, again, is what Beto supporters on Twitter are wont to do):

We’re not in Indiana anymore.

Please note in the above image that the location on the account profile was once Tbilisi, the capital of the country of Georgia.

As I said before, a strange thing happened on Twitter on 7 November 2019: a hashtag started trending. I know, I know, but that wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was that 50% of the hashtag’s use originated from — you guessed it! — the country of Georgia.

The hashtag? #PeteForGovernor:

If this was something the Russians cooked up, then kudos: the Beto stans on the tweetbox ate. it. up. The hashtag was tweeted at least 17,100 times before midnight, but the betobots were unable to keep up with the counter-trend started by Pete stans, which raked in at least 22,400 tweets by the same time.

At some point on 8 November 2019, the account owner changed the location to Indiana:

But inserted a Georgian flag emoji into their display name. <shrug emoji>

This “Pete for Governor” account retains Georgian-themed retweets:

Activity by the account, largely via the reply function, is basically just more Beto-stan-trolls-Pete-stan nonsense, except, reversed. Reverse trolling. Is that like reverse psychology? Probably not.

But what does it all mean?

I have no bloody clue.

Is someone living in Georgia actually that hateful towards a random American politician? Unlikely.

Do Georgians have a longstanding hatred of the Maltese? Maybe.

Are the Georgians trying to pit Buttigieg stans against Beto stans even though Beto is no longer in the presidential race? …Maybe? Divide and conquer, etc.

Could Russians be so terrified of a Buttigieg DNC nomination that they’ll stop at nothing to debase him? I mean, sure, maybe. The likes of Russia want puppets. They knew they’d never be able to control Hillary Clinton, so, enter the current idiot occupier of the Oval. Likewise, Buttigieg would never be duped into anything — he’s probably got the world’s most expressionless poker face and absolutely no tell (#PeteFacts).

Is this all just the work of disgruntled Beto stans, left with too much free time now that their preferred candidate unexpectedly dropped out of the race without any warning which was frankly a real shit thing to do to supporters? Possibly. Probably.

This is what Russia (and Georgia?) does, though. They latch onto any viable vitriol that exists on social media and then try to get it to go viral. My guess, however largely uneducated, is that Beto supporters on the tweetbox got duped by Russians/Georgians into running away with some nonsense smear campaign on Pete Buttigieg.

But, honestly, the joke’s kinda on them: what this smear campaign is basically saying is that Pete Buttigieg is so terrible that he… should upgrade from mayor to governor.

Also, another joke’s on them: what these Russian-Georgian-Texan people-with-too-much-free-time are doing crosses the boundaries set by DMCA fair use laws, edging dangerously close to defamation/mischaracterization/libel/etc. simply by using this “PETE” logo from the candidate’s own design toolkit.

So. წარმატებები! I guess.

One more note: none of these people (at least most of them last I checked), who follow/use this Pete for Governor account are from Indiana. So why, then, do they so badly want Buttigieg to drop out of the presidential race and run for the office of governor?

I’m not saying it’s Russia, but…

Just kidding. Maybe. But what I do know is that Beto stans on the tweetbox got understandably riled whenever someone in seemingly good faith said “I wish Beto would run” or “Beto should run” for Senate/Governor in Texas. Lots of people said this, and often, mainly anyone supporting a different candidate. The same is also said about every single other candidate save for Andrew Yang who isn’t a politician and honestly why is he running for president didn’t we learn our lesson with DJT?

Sigh.

I have a point, I promise.

And it’s that in my opinion it can get really, really old to hear over and over and over that your preferred candidate shouldn’t run for [insert office name here] because they’d be so much better at being [insert lesser office name here].

All of this nonsense is just the work of disgruntled supporters of Beto O’Rourke (and someone in Georgia or someone who uses a VPN), and they’re just having a bit of fun. Fun that would under most circumstances be totally harmless. Except this isn’t most circumstances.

This. Isn’t. A. Goddamn. Joke.

Unless you want another four goddamn years of that lump of orange uselessness who continually strips away the rights of anyone not white, male, and Christian, then grow up and #VoteBlueNoMatterWho

Finally, as proof that not all Beto supporters are toxic:

You’re a good guy, Mr. Allen.