After Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) liked an Instagram post congratulating him on his win.
The only problem — Jackson Lee died last July.
From ghost-likes and new profile pictures to a posthumous endorsement, accounts for dead lawmakers have seemingly resurrected on social media in an unsettling trend of beyond-the-grave engagement.
Unsettling Social Media Resurrections
“Dear White Staffers,” an anonymous account dedicated to highlighting experiences and perspectives of non-white congressional staffers, on Wednesday posted a screenshot of a notification that the late Texas representative’s account had liked the congratulatory post for Mamdani, captioning the screengrab with a quizzical emoji.
But Jackson Lee isn’t the only deceased lawmaker whose presence continues to be felt online.
Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Democrat who filled Lee’s Texas seat for a brief two months before his own passing in March 2025, appeared to change his profile picture on X three weeks after he died.
Posthumous Political Activities
Former Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who died in May, has also continued to make waves from beyond the grave, as his political social media accounts chugged back to life to notify followers that early voting had begun in the race to fill his vacant seat.
People on Connolly’s mailing list have also reportedly continued receiving emails from the late representative’s campaign encouraging Virginians to vote for his endorsed candidate.
Challenges of Posthumous Social Media Management
How to handle the social media presence of politicians when they die is a fairly new phenomenon. If a member of the House dies, for example, their office often remains open to fulfill constituent services — and sometimes continues posting to social media, albeit not typically under the lawmaker’s name.
Zack Brown, who was the communications director for Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) when he died in office in March 2022, said there is no official process for handing off control of lawmakers’ social media accounts if they die while still serving.
Although there were content rules on what staff members were allowed to post to Young’s accounts, there was no guidance on what to do with the accounts themselves.
Security Risks and Digital Legacy
Brown noted that failing to properly administer a lawmaker’s social media presence is also a constituent services issue, as many people reach out to their representative’s offices via direct message for assistance.
Most of all, a lack of procedure for how to handle dead lawmaker’s’ socials poses a host of security risks that would normally be unthinkable for physical record-keeping.
Explore the eerie trend of deceased lawmakers’ social media accounts engaging beyond the grave and the challenges it poses for digital legacy and social media management.
