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Besides their names, Richard Burr of Detroit and Richard Burr of Winston-Salem, N.C., share a few things in common.
Both earned communications degrees, both follow public policy issues intently and both are active on social media.
And each gets slammed regularly on Twitter for political positions held by the one who's a second-term Republican senator in Washington, D,C., as described Monday by the one who's a Detroit News politics and government editor:
Since June, my Twitter account has been the occasional but persistent target of liberals such as MoveOn.org, Democrats and the odd self-proclaimed independent who can’t seem to figure out that @RichardBurr_DN is not @SenatorBurr, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. . . .
I have been told I am “disgusting” because I “keep guns accessible” and am responsible for the resulting gun-crime victims.
I have been chastised for skipping a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. . . .
In mid-June, Forbes staffer Corinne Jurney, a former Raleigh News & Observer reporter, tweeted that “gun reform could happen if @RichardBurr_DN is ousted from Senate. Take note, NC.”
In this playful Twitter profile, which likely adds to the confusion, the newsman poses with a North Carolina campaign sign.
Burr the journalist, who's more than a half-decade younger than the 60-year-old senator, has been at The News 29 years -- eight years longer than Burr the politician has been in Congress. (He came to the U.S. House in 1995 and moved up to the Senate in 2005.)
Burr of Detroit is a far more prolific tweeter than the senator (more than 11,500 to 2,652), though the senator is way ahead in followers on that platform (39,700 to 1,815).
Richard E. Burr (the one not on Nov 8 ballots in North Carolina) is lighthearted about the "case of social media mistaken identity," though he's eager for the other Burr's re-election race to end. "Every burp in the campaign puts me back in the cross-hairs," writes Burr the younger.
