If there’s one Republican in the country who wishes Republicans hadn’t had such a good election night, it’s Rand Paul. This is not to say that Paul wishes ill on his party, or is unhappy with the general outcome, but that he would be better off today if the party’s gains were smaller or concentrated in different places.

It’s no secret that Paul’s chief ambition in life is to be elected president, but he also wants to keep a foothold in the U.S. Senate in case that ambition is deterred. For this to happen, he needs to accomplish three things—to extend the constituency for his foreign policy views in GOP circles; to vanquish establishmentarian rivals in political combat; and to dominate Kentucky politics. All three goals took a hit on Tuesday.

Let’s begin in Kentucky. The 2014 midterms were a largely Southern affair, and Democrats, as you’d expect, were wiped out everywhere they ran. Everywhere, that is, except the Kentucky House, which is now the party’s sole legislative perch in the entire region. Paul wanted Republicans to win that chamber, not just out of a reflexive sense of partisan duty, but because it’s the key to his ability to advance in politics with one foot on the national stage and one foot in the state.

A Republican legislature in Kentucky would have gladly changed state law to allow him to run for president and re-election in the Senate simultaneously. The Democratic House, by contrast, has refused to grant him this favor, which leaves in place a genuine tension between Plan A and Plan B that he’d hoped to resolve on Tuesday.

If Kentucky Democrats don’t relent, and the Republican Party doesn’t help him find a workaround, Paul will eventually have to choose between running for president and running for re-election.