The tweeters take a hit at the Statehouse

Is there a Rhode Island lawmaker willing to embrace the get-it-all-out-there ethos of Twitter once the General Assembly launches a new session in January?

One of the legislature’s leading tweeters, Jon Brien, won’t be back after losing a write-in campaign to Woonsocket firefighter Stephen Casey. And Brien recently deactivated his Twitter handle (@RepJonDBrien50), as the ever-alert Chas Walker noticed.

Dan Gordon, another frequent tweeter, won’t be back this session, either. Nor Bethany Moura.

Of course, the lawmakers whose Twitter feeds would be most interesting — say, Speaker Gordon Fox and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed — are the ones least likely to share such inside news and candid observations.

Fox went up on Twitter during his recent campaign. But he seems bound to repeat the path of House Finance chairman Helio Melo and Senate Finance chairman Dan DaPonte: more frequent tweets during campaigns and not much otherwise (beyond monitoring some of us reporters during committee meetings).

Meanwhile, the current House progressives haven’t come close to replicating the insurgent tweeting style of former reps Chris Fierro and Ray Sullivan.

So who’s ready to take on the mantle of bringing the General Assembly into the brave new world of social media?