

The DNC needs to just finish the slow metamorphosis they’ve been going through for decades and finally merge with the RNC so we can get a new actual opposition party. It’s looking likely that that new party would end up being the democratic socialist party.
Yes, very much so. Each party has their candidate. Some states might let multiple members of the same party run, and there have certainly been instances where people have run unopposed for certain offices, but generally most elected positions in the US are partisan.
It has been a key Republican strategy for several decades now to control as many states governorship as they can manage because it allows them to do things like gerrymandering and to pass state policies that favor Republicans.