As I understand it the way the rats took over RI in the 30’s was practically a coup d’etat. Eh DJ?
RI is an illustration of what can happen when the minority party falls to such low numbers to become unviable.
No town is motivated to elect a GOP state Rep because they lose influence. it becomes logistically not possible to break the stranglehold. Rhode Island is Cook County on different scale.
It WAS a coup d’état by the Democrats. It occurred in 1934 under then-Governor Theodore Francis Green (himself a scion of the early controlling families of RI and before 1932, an also-ran against GOP candidates going back decades).
For a brief time in 1938, it looked like the GOP managed to “take it back”, only to lose it for the long term and effectively to date (save the occasional wins, and the fact the state has tended to prefer non-Dem Governors since after 1984, with Dems only winning due to a scandal-plagued incumbent (DiPrete in 1990) or a split in the center-right vote (in 2014 with the GOP & Ex-Cool Moose’r, and 2010 for that matter since Chafee was the most left-wing candidate).