Mitch McConnell didn’t have much to complain about on the night of November 4, 2014. In that day’s elections, Republicans gained a net nine Senate seats, securing a majority and ensuring McConnell would become Senate majority leader. This was a crowning achievement in a turbulent year for the Kentucky senator, who had faced a tough primary challenge from businessman Matt Bevin. After dispensing with Bevin, McConnell had a real fight in the general election against supposed rising Democratic star Alison Lundergan Grimes. He beat Grimes by 16 points in the general.

Plenty to be pleased about, but McConnell saw something in the election returns he didn’t like. He had carried all but 10 of Kentucky’s 120 counties, the GOP won all but 1 Louisville-centered congressional district, and the party had held on to its majority in the state senate. But the state house of representatives had remained out of Republican reach—a drought of more than 90 years, and the last state legislative house south of the Mason-Dixon line to resist GOP control since the 1920s. What’s more, McConnell learned, in some state house districts where he had won 60 percent or more of the vote, Republicans hadn’t even bothered to run a candidate.