Twitter suspends NH Libertarian candidate for Senate

Nov. 1—Jeremy Kauffman, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, was suspended from Twitter last week just as Elon Musk took over the social media giant, but it's unclear what message got the Manchester entrepreneur in trouble.

Twitter suspended Kaufmann, who frequently sends out controversial tweets, at some point on Oct. 27 or 28. His feed has had no new material since then, and according to a Twitter notice sent to Kauffman, he won't have access to his account for about seven days since the offensive tweet was sent.

That puts his reinstatement sometime Thursday evening, halting his ability to tweet during much of the runup to the Nov. 8 election. The suspension limits him from sending tweets, retweeting and likes. But his Twitter account remains up.

The Twitter account of the state Libertarian Party posted screenshots of the offensive tweet and Twitter's response.

"I was just having some fun," Kauffman told the New Hampshire Union Leader.

"Just some testing," he wrote in the tweet, which included four statements:

"Covid was manmade in China," "Rachel Levine [the Biden administration U.S. assistant secretary of health who transitioned to female] is a man," "(Wisconsin shooter) Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong," and "Some people are retarded."

The automatic suspension notice did not specify which of the four statements violated Twitter rules. Elon Musk paid about $44 billion to assume control of Twitter on Oct 27. Within hours, Musk said Twitter was forming a content moderation council and no major content decisions or account reinstatement will happen before the council convenes.

In a follow-up tweet, Musk wrote: "To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter's content moderation."

Kauffman's campaign appears to be designed to rankle as much as convince people to vote for him. He has produced sarcastic campaign videos denouncing "War as Gay," "War as Retarded," and urging a wall to separate New Hampshire from Massachusetts.

Ever since Musk took over Twitter, the most pressing issue is content moderation and how much he will loosen controls on content. Kauffman said he thinks Twitter will improve under Musk.

"It's hard for it to be worse," Kauffman said.