We lost really big in Kentucky as well. One bright spot is that we have a young rising star who won the Agriculture Commissioner race handily...losing governor was not unexpected as the incumbent had managed to build a lot of popularity (and the candidates we ran weren’t anything to get excited about and the Lt. Governor candidate, who was a UK basketball hero, had his own very popular image tarnished as his wife filed for divorce in the middle of the campaign). Really bad news is the SOS race - the Dem got elected and she opposes picture ID to vote and also supports a policy of not even requiring a specific address to register to vote...she certainly didn’t campaign on that and ran a masterful campaign ad including her two grandmothers that was a huge hit with the public. We lost every other race as well (besides the Ag. Commissioner race I mentioned above). We didn’t lose any ground as Ag. Commissioner is the only office we held going into the election, but still...getting nearly swept like that was a bit of a downer.
I believe that the CT GOP has reached such an anemic state that they cannot compete with the DEMS in any meaningful fashion. The electorate is content to allow the DEMS total control and balance that out by preferring to elect moderate GOP governors.
So the GOP strategy is to wait for 2014 and throw all into the GOV race ... as they can compete if they can throw all resources into one office ... as the electorate prefers them for that one and only one office.
This is no substitute for real party building at the local assembly district level. And it is also boring. Those of us who are interested in doing the assembly district stuff tell ourselves we are doing work that neither the GOP hierarcy nor the voters have any interest in. Baffling to try to come up with solutions.