[Insert Your Own Bad Pun About "Ties" Here]

The Pawtucket Times' Jim Baron offers an assessment of the epic 2-2 deadlock in the race for Rhode Island Senate Minority Leader…

For years, [Current Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere] has led the Senate Republicans on the go-along course. Heck, most votes in the senate (I’m tempted to say almost all, but I don’t have the numbers in front of me) are 38-0 or however-many-senators-are-present-that-day to zero. On those pitifully few occasions where the Republicans do put up a fight, it is usually led by [Senator Leo Blais]....

Senate Republicans have to choose between the path of going along to get nowhere or of picking up the cudgel of activism and acrimony to go down fighting —between amity and the Alamo.

Neither strategy is likely to make the minority a winner in the Senate anytime soon. What the Republicans have to decide is how they want to lose. Once they do that, they will have their minority leader.