Denouncing “corruption, crime and cronyism at the highest levels of state government,” Mr. Hubbard created a sophisticated — some have said legally questionable — fund-raising machine to win control of the State House in 2010. Chairman of both the State Republican Party and the House caucus, he conscripted candidates — bank employees, foresters, waste haulers — and determined where campaign money should be spent.

In November 2010, the Republicans not only took over the State House for the first time in 136 years, they won a supermajority, winning every court race on the ballot and every statewide office. Mr. Bentley, a dermatologist and low-profile legislator, was elected governor. Mr. Hubbard was unanimously elected speaker of the House, where his first priority was to pass an ethics law described as among the strongest in the country.

Four years later, Mr. Hubbard was indicted on a charge of violating that ethics law, accused of using his positions as speaker and party chairman to solicit work and investments for his own financial interest by steering campaign work to his business interests and pushing bills that helped his consulting clients.

That his moneymaking plans were running into the ethics law he helped pass is something he is shown lamenting in private emails released by prosecutors. “Who proposed those things?!” he wrote, apparently jokingly, to Mr. Riley, the former governor. “What were we thinking?” He would eventually argue in court that the ethics law was unconstitutional.

Still, Mr. Hubbard remains the speaker and enjoys steadfast support in the House. This is in part because Democrats and their backers have been almost completely frozen out of state politics.

But Mr. Flynt and others say there is more to it than the lack of competition. The speed and scale of the Republican takeover brought into power a class of politicians inexperienced with total control, some with no political experience at all. There was little candidate-grooming infrastructure in the party beyond what Mr. Hubbard and his allies put together; at one point, he suggested the creation of a “shadow party,” something that would be effectively achieved by way of political action committees.