PROVIDENCE –– The imbalance of power in state politics has reached historic proportions.

Voters this week cut the Republican Party’s already tiny State House minority nearly in half. When lawmakers convene in January, Republicans will occupy just 10 of 113 General Assembly seats, believed to be their lowest number in Rhode Island history.

Republican leaders, Governor Carcieri included, downplayed the losses yesterday. But political observers said results suggest that the Republican Party is barely functioning.

“It’s really on life support,” said Maureen Moakley, University of Rhode Island political science professor, adding that the demise of opposition is never something to celebrate. “This is ridiculous; we need a two-party system.”

Indeed, Republicans held 18 seats — 13 in the House and 5 in the Senate — before the election. They now hold just 6 in the House and 4 in the Senate, according to unofficial results posted by the state Board of Elections, which don’t include mail ballots.

Republicans last had 4 seats in the state Senate after the 1974 election, which came three months after Republican President Richard Nixon resigned in the face of the Watergate scandal. (The GOP held 18 House seats that year, triple the current number.)

“I think this year the only thing that would be worse than losing would be winning, because with only 6 Republicans in the House it would just be a waste of time to be up there,” said Lincoln Republican William McManus, who narrowly lost to Democratic newcomer Mary Ann Shallcross-Smith. “We weren’t very effective with 13 — how can we be effective with 6?”

Other Election Day losers appear to include the longest-serving member of the House, Middletown Rep. Bruce Long; House Minority Whip Nicholas Gorham, of Coventry; and 11-term Republican incumbent Sen. June Gibbs.

Carcieri and other Republicans interviewed yesterday blamed the losses on the swell of Democratic support for President-elect Barack Obama and discontent with the current Republican administration in Washington.

“I think it was a lot of pent-up reaction to the Bush administration,” Carcieri said. “Nobody wants to vote for a Republican right now.”

State Democratic Party chairman Bill Lynch, however, said Carcieri is also to blame for his party’s failings.

“He is the identified face of the Republican Party and not a very popular one,” Lynch said. “People did not want to run hand in hand with George Bush or Don Carcieri, frankly.”

But the struggles of Republicans, who last held majorities in the state legislature in the late-1950s, may be more complicated than that. The Republican Party here, and across New England, is suffering an identity crisis of sorts.

“I think it’s the loss of Lincoln Chafee and that progressive tradition that hurt them,” Moakley said. “The party has been captured by conservatives and that’s really started to play out here. We lost Chafee and [Warwick Mayor Scott] Avedisian is no longer playing a dominant role in the management of the party… They’ve lost that moderate element that I think voters relate to.”

With Republicans now at the helm in the state’s second- and third-largest cities (Republican Allan W. Fung is the newly elected mayor of Cranston), Avedisian disputed the notion the GOP is dead. But he suggested his party has done a poor job supporting candidates.

“When you have people who just arrive on the doorstep at the filing deadline, who aren’t necessarily known in their community, that’s not necessarily helpful to anybody,” Avedisian said.

In some races, however, the state party failed to produce a candidate.

Tiverton Democratic Town Councilman John G. Edwards walked into state office after running unopposed for the House District 70 seat previously held by a Republican, Joseph Amaral, who did not seek reelection.

The party wasn’t able to provide much financial help to those who did run. And what they did provide — a series of provocative direct-mail pieces — was controversial.

One that drew the most attention featured a car accident scene, next to the words: “The next time you see someone CRUSHED on the highway by an illegal alien with a Rhode Island driver’s license … Remember it was [Portsmouth Sen.] Charles Levesque who got him his license.”

GOP executive director Marc Pappas defended the mailers as accurate and said he wished the party had the money to produce more.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that the most successful right-leaning candidates this year had to avoid the Republican Party altogether to win.

Senate President Joseph Montalbano was defeated by Edward O’Neill, an independent. And Senate Finance Chairman Stephen Alves was defeated in a Democratic primary by Michael Pinga, a West Warwick baker who had been a registered Republican the year before.

Carcieri suggested the imbalance wouldn’t be a major problem.

“I think it’s healthy to have balance and have debate. But what I’m saying is that I’ve lived in this world since I’ve become governor and you just have to do it,” he said. “You have to find a way.”

kgregg@projo.com