‘I am authentic, genuine, accessible’: Manhattan DA candidate Eliza Orlins says Twitter followers find her relatable

No one has the password to the Twitter account of Manhattan district attorney candidate Eliza Orlins except Orlins herself, who has tripled her audience to more than 120,300 followers since first launching her campaign 15 months ago.

The career public defender attributes the growth to her years of no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach to tweeting — 140-character blasts on criminal justice issues like decriminalizing sex work, bail reform or mass incarceration that she writes herself, sometimes as late as 2 a.m. She does this so often that her senior campaign adviser, Alexandra De Luca, will frequently wake up, see one of her middle-of-the-night posts, and say, “Eliza, you’re allowed to sleep!”

Manhattan DA candidate Eliza Orlins

Orlins has nearly 10 times the Twitter following of challenger Tahanie Aboushi — who has the second-highest of the eight candidates at around 12,300 — and about 200 times that of opponent Diana Florence. And while Orlins acknowledges the number of followers doesn’t equate to votes, her social media posts have helped shape the race in the digital sphere, and will likely continue to play a role ahead of the June 22 Democratic primary.

“We have this unbelievable grassroots army, these people who are so excited about my campaign, and I think it’s because I am authentic and genuine and accessible — and [because] I am so passionate about these issues,” the 38-year-old Orlins told the Daily News, noting that she will often lay awake replying directly to DMs.

“This is the future of running for office. People don’t want this stiff, buttoned-up, inaccessible person who they don’t feel any connection to,” added Orlins, who recently tweeted a picture of a stan wearing a pair of blue and bubblegum pink Converses that featured her first name.

“People want to support, and volunteer for, and go out and vote for someone who they feel is relatable, who they trust who they think is authentic — not someone who’s just spouting talking points or tweeting out something that like their consultants have written for them,” she said. “This is inherent to who I am.”

Orlins first created her Twitter account in July 2007, three years after she first competed on CBS’s “Survivor.” The TV show helped launch her into the national spotlight, as did her 2018 appearance on “The Amazing Race.”

But it was when Orlins called out Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. on Twitter for “touting himself for dismissing marijuana cases” that her social media following began to blow up.

“Tonight, I arrived in night court at 5pm and the FIRST CASE I picked up is a possession of marijuana case,” she tweeted on Sept. 12, 2018. “My client was arrested 5pm yesterday. The case is NOT being dismissed.”

A year later, on her way home from night court in Manhattan, Orlins tweeted about how prosecutors asked the judge to sentence her client to 30 days in jail over a loaf of bread — a heartfelt 12:43 a.m. message that garnered nearly 50,000 likes, and put her in the social media spotlight.

Yet Orlins says it’s not about the likes, but whether she’s getting across to supporters. On Thursday, she tweeted a four-part thread telling followers that her campaign had a big fund-raising deadline to meet, and that they were falling behind.

“I’m not just saying that. We really are. We’re being outraised, but we have the people power,” she wrote.

Manhattan DA candidate Eliza Orlins

Five days and dozens of Tweets and retweets later, Orlins announced that her team had hit 10,000 individual contributions on Tuesday, “blowing away every other candidate in this race.”

“I could not be more proud of the movement we have built together, and the change we’ll make with a public defender in the DA’s office,” she tweeted. “Thank you. Now let’s go win!”