Matt Bevin

Kentucky voters on Tuesday elected just the second Republican in four decades to hold the governor’s office, in a race that hinged largely on President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act.

The result represented a big win for the GOP as it continues to consolidate political power across the South. Democrats also were thumped in Virginia, where they made a costly push to win a majority in one chamber of the state Legislature.

The governor’s race in Kentucky was the highest profile contest in Tuesday’s off-year elections. The only other gubernatorial campaign was in Mississippi, where Republican Gov. Phil Bryant easily won re-election.

Elsewhere, Houston voters defeated a closely watched ordinance that would have established nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people in the city.

In Kentucky, Republican businessman Matt Bevin had waged a campaign to scale back the state’s Medicaid expansion that was made possible under the federal health care overhaul. Some 400,000 lower-income people who gained health coverage under the expansion could be affected.

Bevin ran as an outsider, emphasizing his Christian faith along with his support for Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His Democratic opponent, two-term Attorney General Jack Conway, embraced Obama’s health care reforms.