Who’s Writing Jon Huntsman’s Tweets?

The media is all abuzz about Jon Huntsman’s Twitter account, which established a new tone on Thursday morning, when the campaign responded to Rick Perry’s thoughts on evolution with this little gem: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Tweets like that—and one about the candidate’s love of Captain Beefheart—have earned @JonHunstman a lot of new followers, and even a charming shout-out from his daughters. Meanwhile, blogs from the Los Angeles Times to the Atlantic are saying that the candidate, “obviously feeling liberated,” has “found his voice.”

But like most politicians and presidential hopefuls, Huntsman doesn’t actually send his own tweets. “Governor Huntsman suggests tweets and sees all the tweets,” said campaign spokesman Tim Miller, adding that Huntsman—who, he insists, knows how to tweet—collaborates with “one person.”

The odd thing is, Miller refuses to reveal the name of that person. “I don’t really want to get into all that,” he said, suggesting that would take the focus off of the candidate.

It’s a pity, because the tweeter in question deserves a lot of credit. “[Huntsman’s] feed has been really good the last few days,” said Jacob Weisberg, whose profile of Huntsman was just published in the September issue of Vogue. “Someone there understands Twitter.”

That someone may not be Huntsman, but the candidate was responsible for the genesis of at least one tweet: the one about Captain Beefheart.

“That’s all Governor Huntsman,” Miller says. “We were joking about the feed, and he said, ‘I wonder what kind of response we’d get if I admitted that I was a Captain Beefheart fan.’ So we said, ‘Let’s see.’ He had us laughing, so hopefully he had everybody else laughing, too.”