They had hoped to be celebrating a congressional district upset or at least the reclamation of the governor's office. But Wednesday, the only gains Massachusetts Republicans had to brag about were establishing a stronger minority in the Legislature, fending off challengers for sheriff, and picking up open seats on the Governor's Council. After Scott Brown's upset Senate victory in January, Massachusetts Republicans had started to convince themselves that anything was possible. But their only significant win in Tuesday's election came in the State House, where they doubled their representation in the House to 32 and several victors won so narrowly that they may face recounts. 'It's a silver lining, but we were expecting a lot more than a silver lining,' said Republican analyst Todd Domke. 'We were expecting something a little more kaleidoscopic.' The most likely target of anger over the results is state Republican Party chairman Jennifer Nassour, who tried to play down the statewide losses, preferring to focus on the legislative gains. The election boosted House Republican concentration as high as 20 percent, but it represented a sharp reversal of fortune in a chamber that had long seen a declining GOP presence. 'For the past 18 years, we have been losing seats,' Nassour said, 'so the fact that we gained so many is such a great accomplishment for us.' Republicans had hoped for something more like 1990, when William F. Weld took the governor's office and the House ranks grew to 38 Republicans. But they had farther to go to regain ground this year. Republican ranks were so thin that they did not even have the 16 votes in the House to demand a roll call vote on a disputed measure. House minority leader Bradley H. Jones Jr. said that by doubling the GOP membership, the House will have more eyes keeping a check on the majority and twice as many voices to amplify the minority point of view. 'The glass is more than half-full from my perspective, and that is important salve for the wounds,' he said. 'We would have liked to win statewide office.' But the glass is a little emptier in the Senate, where minority leader Richard Tisei gave up his seat to run for lieutenant governor and a Democrat picked it up. Without him, only four incumbent Republicans are returning to the chamber of 40. Tisei blamed the lack of GOP gains in the Senate on the strong Democratic turnout in cities that dot the larger Senate districts. But he found the House results encouraging as a benchmark, since so many Senate candidates first serve in the House. 'If you're talking about rebuilding the party from the ground up, that's really good news,' Tisei said. Even though Republicans held the governor's office for 16 years, the party has otherwise had a paltry presence in Massachusetts in recent history, and prior efforts to boost Republican legislative ranks fell flat. In 2004, Governor Mitt Romney introduced 131 candidates and spearheaded a $3 million fund-raising effort, but the GOP still lost three seats. This year, national disenchantment with Democratic leadership and the rise in influence of the conservative Tea Party seemed to portend better results. But even before Tuesday, it did not translate into increased Republican registration. The GOP entered the general election with less than 12 percent of the voting base, but still managed to put up 140 candidates and had energy atop the ticket as they tried to return the governor's office to Republican hands after four years of leadership by Democratic Governor Deval Patrick. Now, the party has also lost its new standardbearer, Charles D. Baker, the wunderkind of the Weld and Cellucci administrations who was beaten by Patrick. For Republicans, the disappointing results reaffirmed their assumptions rather than their dreams: The GOP needs to rebuild from the ground up. 'There's nothing that we could have done differently,' said Nassour. Party leaders had been trying to rebuild by activating Republican town committees and recruiting candidates for down-ballot races well before Brown's election ratcheted up the pressure to repeat the wins on a grand scale. But some misread the lessons of his election, said Nassour. Though Brown may have seemed to burst onto the national stage, he had put in many years as a Wrentham selectman, a state representative, a state senator, and a tireless campaigner before he emerged as a candidate for the US Senate, she said. 'You can't just wake up and be Scott Brown,' Nassour said. 'You have to be homegrown and organic, and it has to start somewhere, which is why I have high hopes for our new group coming into the Legislature.' She and her spokeswoman pointed to a smattering of Republican wins beyond the Legislature: Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson and Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz won reelection, and Lewis G. Evangelidis won an open seat for Worcester County Sheriff. Jennie I. Caissie, an Oxford Republican, won the Seventh District race for Governor's Council, and Charles Cipollini won in the First District, against his brother. 'We're back to the pre-Scott-Brown reputation, this hopelessly liberal democratic bastion,' said Domke. 'It definitely feels like a one-party state again.' 