Bryan Mills, a Republican Party official in Laurel County, spent Thursday squiring Rand Paul's campaign chairman to more than a dozen meetings with Republican officeholders.
That's not unusual, because Paul is the party's nominee for U.S. Senate.
But Paul ran outside the party establishment, against a man endorsed by leaders of that establishment and without the support of many in the party structure.
"It happened, and we've got to not pretend it didn't happen, and we've got to build a bridge back," said Mills, chairman of the Laurel County Republican Party.
Efforts to reconstruct that bridge are growing as Paul, a Bowling Green eye surgeon, gears up for what promises to be a hard-fought campaign against Attorney General Jack Conway, the Democratic nominee.
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