I have a weekend home in Kentucky and the county it is located in, just two years ago elected the first Republican Judge Executive EVER in the history of the county. It is a slow process to convert residents to think Republican. It has a history of the good old boys network which takes time to break up. We keep tapping away at it and are making progress.
Most of them have already made the transition at the top of the ticket. It’s just a trickle-down effect from the federal to the courthouse level. As it is, parts of KY have been Republican with little to no interruption since Reconstruction (SE KY, absent the coal mining counties along the VA/WV border, though some of those were GOP-leaning before the UMW, and are already trending back, especially after Hal Rogers took in the old 7th, represented for decades by the Perkins’s).
The westernmost part, which was dominated by the Dem politics of Alben Barkley, moved to the GOP in the ‘90s after Ed Whitfield’s election to Congress.
The only real Dem strength for the forseeable future is going to be centered in the urban areas of Louisville and Lexington (Blacks & White libs) and the big gubmint supporting Frankfort. The suburbs and the rest of the rural parts of the state will provide the majority GOP strength.
Add in, too, the stupidity of KY Dems recruiting a national Democrat radical like Ashley Judd to run for the Senate, and it’s only going to have a backlash effect downballot.