Sam Youngman: Kentucky politics moves to a deep shade of red

Tomatoes, fire engines and stop signs — they've got nothing on the state of Kentucky.

Politically, this state is red. Not purple, not pink, not reddish, but red. Really red.

For the first time in the state's history, Bluegrass seems like a misnomer.

It would be an understatement to call Tuesday a good night for Republicans — it might well have been the end of the Democratic Party in a state where it dominated for so long.

This was a massacre from top to bottom, with Alison Lundergan Grimes and Andy Beshear the only people left standing with Ds behind their names.

Not only did a big red Republican wave sweep Matt Bevin into the governor's mansion, it took out perhaps the Kentucky Democratic Party's biggest rising star in Adam Edelen.

Bevin's win, in this political environment, wasn't a shock. But the margin of victory and the down-ballot casualties certainly were.

In what looked like a close race — the Bluegrass Poll wasn't the only one to get the winner wrong — Republicans blew the doors off Democrats. For the second time in a year, it appears that every undecided voter in the state broke hard to the right.

It's hard to imagine where the Democrats go from here.

Democrats thought they had this race won. They were preparing for a Gov. Jack Conway to help protect the Democratic majority in the state House and for Edelen to give U.S. Sen. Rand Paul a run for his money in 2016.

If there was a big winner Tuesday night who wasn't on the ballot, it was Paul.

For the past few weeks, national news reports have talked about how state Republicans were running out of patience with Paul's presidential run, worrying more and more about Paul jeopardizing his Senate seat by chasing an impossible dream.

Now Paul can run as long as he wants. There is almost no reason for him to worry about his seat. It is, after all, safely nestled in a very red state.

As for Bevin, his win illustrated a number of things.

First, it demonstrated the limits and problems with polling in modern politics.

We'll take another look at the Bluegrass Poll's results, but there also was a pretty stark disconnect between the state's chattering class and its voters.

For weeks, the people who are involved in politics on a daily basis talked about how bad a campaign Bevin had run, raising questions about his temperament, his honesty and his campaign strategy.

On Tuesday night, he certainly had the last laugh, and to his credit, he declined to take it, calling instead for unity in addressing the challenges facing Kentucky.

Bevin's win can also be seen as a warning sign for national Democrats.

Conway was an experienced public servant who ran a gaffe-free campaign while raising significantly more money than Bevin did.

Bevin was an outsider, a Tea Party favorite with limited knowledge about state government and a habit of unnecessary confrontation.

None of those things mattered in the end.

Ultimately, the political environment was exactly what we thought it would be when Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis went to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

And it's difficult to imagine that President Barack Obama didn't loom large over this race as he did last year.

While Kentuckians have generally given the state's version of the president's health care law high marks, it's clear from Tuesday night's results that general contempt for Obama continued to cast a large shadow over the hopes of Democrats in the state.

Now Republicans are only missing one piece of the puzzle before U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's dream of a Republican Kentucky comes true — taking the state House.

And that was clearly on the minds of Bevin's supporters when they began chanting "Flip the House" as Bevin's victory speech came to an end.

At least one Democrat was still optimistic Tuesday night.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo acknowledged that "it was a night that some of us didn't see coming."

"But there is a dawn tomorrow," Stumbo said.

He's right about that in the literal sense. But after Tuesday night, it certainly looks like a red dawn.

This story was originally published November 3, 2015 at 10:38 PM with the headline "Sam Youngman: Kentucky politics moves to a deep shade of red."