Unlike his opponent, Beto O’Rourke says he’s the ‘only one who tweets’ on his account

Just in case you were wondering, Beto O’Rourke — the El Paso Democrat challenging Republican Ted Cruz for his U.S. Senate seat next year — staffs his own Twitter account.

And he even drew some “well-deserved” criticism for it during a Wednesday campaign event at TCU, he told the Star-Telegram’s Editorial Board.

A student told O’Rourke that he isn’t on Twitter enough.

“I tweet maybe once or twice a day,” said O’Rourke, a punk rocker turned lawmaker who is waging a long-shot bid to unseat Cruz in 2018. “I said, ‘I’m the only one who tweets.’ ”

As a result, he said he has to choose between being “engaged in the moment” — at town halls, editorial board meetings or any other type of campaign event — or constantly keeping up with other tweets, working to get a “great zinger in or some provocative comment that gets me a lot of followers.

“There’s a trade-off.”

O’Rourke’s comments come a week after Cruz drew massive media attention after his official Twitter account “liked” a pornographic video.

The senator told the media that it happened after a staffer “accidentally hit the wrong button.”

“And it was a screw-up,” Cruz said during a CNN interview. “I will say Twitter went crazy with it. It became trending. As soon as we found out about it, we pulled it down. And it’s generated a lot of amusement. It has prompted a lot of jokes.”

Cruz, a former presidential candidate whose strongholds have long included Dallas-Fort Worth, said a “number of people” in his office have access to his account.

That’s not the case with O’Rourke, who didn’t mention Cruz’s Twitter incident and only spoke about his own account after being asked.

O’Rourke, who hopes to be the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, said he believes he’s pretty good with using Facebook Live to talk to Texans.

And he could, of course, hire someone to manage his Twitter account.

“But then that’s no longer me,” O’Rourke said. “I’m the only one in control of it.

“But it comes with some limitations. I wish there were just more hours in the day to get in more time on Twitter.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2017 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Unlike his opponent, Beto O’Rourke says he’s the ‘only one who tweets’ on his account."