LOUISVILLE — Matt Bevin, Kentucky’s new Republican governor-elect, likes to catch his opponents off guard. So on a Friday in September, while driving by the state Democratic Party headquarters — where a sign declared “We Can’t Trust Matt Bevin” — he decided, spur-of-the-moment, to pop in.

“I said, ‘Hey, I’m Matt Bevin, I’m guessing this is probably not a place where I’m going to get a lot of votes, but you never know,’ “ Mr. Bevin recalled in an interview during the final days of his campaign. “I said, ‘You all spend a lot of time talking about me, we spend a lot of time talking about you, we ought to get to know each other.’ “

Democrats accused Mr. Bevin of berating their receptionists — he says he did not — and pounced on the episode as an example of what they view as his bizarre, erratic behavior. But his driver that day, State Representative Jerry T. Miller, said Mr. Bevin “was giddy” when he returned to the car. “He says, ‘I think I sold a few people in there, I think I picked up a few votes.’ “

It was hardly the only unconventional detour taken by Mr. Bevin, a Tea Party favorite and wealthy Louisville businessman who has never held elective office, in a long-shot campaign that ended Tuesday as he trounced his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, and remade the political landscape in a state where his party has held the governorship for just four of the past 44 years.