page_title: William McKinley 1896 presidential campaign
section_title: First modern primary campaign
hierarchical_section_title: William McKinley 1896 presidential campaign / Gaining the nomination / First modern primary campaign
context_page_description: In 1896, William McKinley was elected President of the United States. McKinley, a Republican and former Governor of Ohio, defeated the joint Democratic and Populist nominee, William Jennings Bryan, as well as minor-party candidates. McKinley's decisive victory in what is sometimes seen as a realigning election ended a period of close presidential contests, and ushered in an era of dominance for the Republican Party.
  McKinley was born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio. After service as an Army officer in the Civil War, he became a lawyer and settled in Canton, Ohio. In 1876 he was elected to Congress, and he remained there most of the time until 1890, when he was defeated for re-election in a gerrymandered district. By this time he was considered a likely presidential candidate, especially after being elected governor in 1891 and 1893. McKinley had incautiously co-signed the loans of a friend, and demands for repayment were made on him when his friend went bankrupt in the Panic of 1893. Personal insolvency would have removed McKinley as a factor in the 1896 campaign, but he was rescued from this by businessmen who supported him, led by his friend and political manager, Mark Hanna.
context_section_description: The outcome of the 1894 elections made it increasingly likely that a Republican would be the next president. At the time, the presidential nominating process started much later than it subsequently would, and McKinley, in quietly organizing his campaign with Hanna's aid in the early months of 1895, was alone among the candidates in acting so early. Other potential Republican candidates were former president Harrison, incoming Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine, Iowa Senator William B. Allison, and several state favorite sons, such as Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom. If former president Harrison entered the race, he would immediately become a major contender, and uncertainty over his status hung over the race in 1895. At the time, unless there was an incumbent elected Republican president, the nomination was generally not decided until the convention, with state political bosses and delegates exacting a price for their support. A candidate's efforts to gain the nomination did not begin until shortly before the state delegate conventions in the spring of the election year, where fights over the makeup of the delegation often focused on who would be on it, rather than who delegates would support. McKinley and Hanna decided on a systematic nationwide effort to gain the nomination, employing what onetime presidential adviser Karl Rove—author of a 2015 book on the 1896 race—called "the first modern primary campaign".
  To devote himself full-time to McKinley's presidential campaign, Hanna in 1895 turned over management of his companies to his brother Leonard, and rented a house in Thomasville, Georgia, expressing a dislike for Cleveland's winters. He was joined there by William and Ida McKinley in early 1895. The location was a plausibly nonpolitical vacation spot for McKinley, and also permitted him to meet many southern Republicans, including blacks. Although southern Republicans rarely had local electoral success, they elected a substantial number of delegates to the national convention. McKinley and Hanna hosted many southern Republican leaders in Thomasville, subsidizing those who did not have the money to come, and made many converts. The governor also traveled in the South; in Savannah at the end of March 1895, he became the first presidential hopeful in American history to address an audience of blacks when he spoke at an African American church. By the time he left Thomasville, he had gained the support of the majority of likely southern delegates; Platt wrote mournfully in his autobiography that Hanna "had the South practically solid before some of us awakened".
  In giving attention to national affairs, McKinley neglected his home front in Ohio, and when the Republican state convention met in Zanesville in May 1895, it proved to be controlled by the resurgent Foraker, who sought the Senate seat to be filled by the Ohio General Assembly in January 1896. That convention endorsed McKinley for president and Foraker for Senate, and nominated Foraker supporters for state and party offices, including Asa Bushnell to succeed McKinley as governor. McKinley realized that it would be risky to have a faction hostile to the presidential candidate within his home state, and sought an alliance, campaigning for Bushnell and for a Republican legislature that would send Foraker to Washington. The voters chose Bushnell and gave the state Republicans a large majority in the legislature. In January 1896, Foraker was overwhelmingly elected (to take office in March 1897), and McKinley gained Foraker's agreement to support him for president, assuring party political peace at home.
  During 1895, Hanna journeyed east to meet with the political bosses there, including Pennsylvania Senator Matthew Quay and Thomas C. Platt of New York. He returned to report that the bosses were willing to assure McKinley's nomination in exchange for a pledge to give them control over patronage in their states and a promise in writing that Platt would be Treasury Secretary. McKinley was unwilling to deal, seeking a nomination without strings, and Hanna
caption: Iowa Senator William B. Allison was a contender for the 1896 Republican presidential nomination.
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