Republican Matt Bevin Wins Kentucky Governor’s Race . A year after challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a primary, the conservative businessman takes the top spot in state politics.

The National Journal reports:

Tea party-backed busi­ness­man Matt Bev­in com­pleted a stun­ning polit­ic­al comeback Tues­day, win­ning the Ken­tucky gov­ernor’s race after en­ter­ing the cam­paign at the very last mo­ment earli­er this year.

Bev­in led Demo­crat Jack Con­way, Ken­tucky’s two-term at­tor­ney gen­er­al, 52 per­cent to 44 per­cent when the As­so­ci­ated Press called the race just after 8 p.m. East­ern. Con­way nev­er trailed in a pub­lic poll this sum­mer or fall, dur­ing the run-up to Elec­tion Day, and Bev­in even trailed in his cam­paign’s own in­tern­al polling. But the Re­pub­lic­an kept the race close and Ken­tucky’s in­creas­ingly con­ser­vat­ive lean swept him home.

Bev­in’s vic­tory upends a dec­ades-long trend in Ken­tucky in which Demo­crats have seen suc­cess at the state level des­pite strug­gling in fed­er­al races. Bev­in leaned on so­cial is­sues, in­clud­ing Row­an County Clerk Kim Dav­is’s re­fus­al to is­sue same-sex mar­riage li­censes this sum­mer, to en­er­gize con­ser­vat­ive voters. Bev­in also cri­ti­cized Con­way for not de­fend­ing the state’s same-sex mar­riage ban in court as at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

And the Re­pub­lic­an Gov­ernors As­so­ci­ation spent mil­lions of dol­lars on ads ty­ing Con­way to Pres­id­ent Obama on coal, health care, and oth­er is­sues, a for­mula the group rode to suc­cess in oth­er red-state races over the past five years.

Imagine that.