Oregon Republicans face a familiar question after gubernatorial defeat: What now?

President Donald Trump wanted people to pretend he was on the ballot this midterm.

So did Gov. Tina Kotek.

For the Oregon governor, the strategy worked.

In the run-up to Election Day, the Democratic Party in Oregon offered a steady drumbeat tying state Sen. Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate for governor, to the Trump administration. And the national Republican backlash voters delivered Tuesday helped buoy Kotek to another four-year term despite deep dissatisfaction with the direction the state is heading.

“The president is very unpopular. Tina Kotek ran a campaign that was anti-Republican and anti-Trump and that seemed to be the mood of Oregonians and Americans on Nov. 3,” said John Horvick, a senior vice president with the polling company DHM Research.

It has also prompted a familiar reckoning for Oregon Republicans who haven’t managed to elect a Republican to the governor’s seat since 1982. Drazan raised significant money, there were no major gaffes and by many accounts, it was a solid campaign. And once again, it was not enough.

Former Republican candidate Knute Buehler, who ran against Kate Brown in 2018, knows the feeling.

“Former (U.S. House) Speaker Tip O’Neill always said that you know, all politics is local. Now, it’s completely flipped in the Trump era and all politics is national,” Buehler said. “Christine got swamped by the national trend. No matter what kind of campaign she ran … she would have lost.”

Lee Shaker, the chair of the communication department and an associate professor at Portland State University, echoed the sentiment but said Tuesday night went beyond what was normal for most electoral cycles.

“Last night the whole country was a hostile environment for anyone running for the GOP,” he said. “It didn’t matter what state you were in, the electorate was not interested in voting for Republicans.”

In one of Drazan’s final campaign advertisements of the election cycle, she tried to separate herself from the Trump administration. She looked directly into the camera and promised she wouldn’t ban abortions, she wouldn’t cut healthcare and she wouldn’t let Washington, D.C., control Oregon. It was the closest she got to directly saying she wasn’t MAGA.

But during the May primary election, the Drazan campaign sent out mailers noting she would be a “pro-life champion.”

And that is the tricky dynamic Republicans face in winning statewide office in Oregon: how to appeal to a more conservative base to get past the primary without alienating the general election voters.

“We have been talking about this for over a decade,” Buehler said. “The playbook remains the same. Republicans in Oregon have to broaden their electoral coalition … focusing on highly divisive cultural issues is not going to broaden that coalition.”

Buehler noted how powerful the state’s leading anti-abortion advocacy group Oregon Right To Life is to securing the GOP endorsement. Republican candidates are often handicapped without it.

“At some point you have to align with the beliefs of the electorate and that’s just not being done,” Buehler said. Oregonians overwhelmingly support the ability for women to access reproductive healthcare.

The other limiting factor in Oregon is likely the closed primary system, according to Shaker.

Oregon does so much to expand voter engagement, such as vote-by-mail and automatically registering voters at the DMV, but closed primaries disenfranchise an increasingly large group of voters. The state has a growing number of non-affiliated voters and only those registered with a party are able to participate in the primary.

“When you have closed primaries only the dyed-in-the-wool supporters show up to vote and it pulls the candidates to the extremes, on both the left and the right,” Shaker, with PSU, said.

In the 2010 race for governor, Republican Chris Dudley came very close to beating the Democrat, John Kitzhaber. Dudley resurfaced this year, vying again for the job. Drazan beat him in the primary. One of the criticisms lobbed against Dudley during the primary election was after losing he didn’t stick around to help Republicans build their bench or rebuild coalitions. He said that was because he followed his wife’s career and the family moved out of Oregon for a spell.

On Wednesday afternoon, Drazan released a statement where she didn’t concede the race but clearly nod to the fact that multiple media outlets had.

“I have sat with parents who wonder whether their kids will ever be able to afford a home in the communities where they grew up. I have listened to small business owners who have poured their lives into something they built, only to wonder how much longer they can keep their doors open,” Drazan wrote in the statement. “I have met Oregonians who work hard, sometimes holding down two or three jobs, and still feel like the life they are working toward is slipping further out of reach.”

Through it all, she said, she met a lot of people who aren’t giving up.

And her statement seemed to signal she wasn’t going away.

“Neither have I. Because I know what Oregon is capable of. I know that our best days do not have to be behind us.”