page_title: John Y. Brown (politician, born 1835)
section_title: 1891 gubernatorial election
hierarchical_section_title: John Y. Brown (politician, born 1835) / 1891 gubernatorial election
caption_attribution_description: English: Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., son of Kentucky Congressman Brutus J. Clay and nephew of abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay; chair of the 1891 Kentucky constitutional convention
context_page_description: John Young Brown was a politician from the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. He represented the state in the United States House of Representatives and served as its 31st governor. Brown was elected to the House of Representatives for three non-consecutive terms, each of which was marred by controversy. He was first elected in 1859, despite his own protests that he was not yet twenty-five years old; the minimum age set by the Constitution for serving in the legislature. The voters of his district elected him anyway, but he was not allowed to take his seat until the Congress' second session, after he was of legal age to serve. After moving to Henderson, Kentucky, Brown was elected from that district in 1866. On this occasion, he was denied his seat because of alleged disloyalty to the Union during the Civil War. Voters in his district refused to elect another representative, and the seat remained vacant throughout the term to which Brown was elected. After an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1871, Brown was again elected to the House in 1872 and served three consecutive terms.
context_section_description: Following his service in the House, Brown resumed his law practice in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1891, he was a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. The other candidates included Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., son of former Congressman Brutus J. Clay and nephew of abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay; Dr. John Daniel Clardy, later to be elected a U.S. Representative; and Attorney General Parker Watkins Hardin. The party was split between supporters of corporations, such as the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and supporters of agrarian interests. Another split was between the more conservative Bourbon Democrats, who supported maintaining the gold standard, and more progressive Democrats, who called for the free coinage of silver. Agrarian voters were about equally split between Clay and Clardy, while Free Silver Democrats were about equally split between Hardin and Clardy. Having lived in the agrarian western part of the state for most of his life, and never having alienated the powerful Farmers' Alliance, Brown was acceptable to most agrarian interests, while the Louisville and Nashville Railroad felt he was a moderate on the issue of corporate regulation. Bourbon Democrats were also pleased with his sound money stand.
  Entering the Democratic nominating convention, Brown seemed to be the favorite for the nomination. On the first ballot, he garnered the most votes (275), leading Clay (264), Clardy (190), and Hardin (186). Over the next nine ballots, the vote counts changed little. Finally, the convention chairman announced that the candidate receiving the fewest votes on the next ballot would be dropped from the voting. Clardy received the fewest votes, and on the next ballot, his supporters divided almost equally between the remaining three candidates. Hardin was the next candidate to be dropped, and Brown received a majority over Clay on the thirteenth ballot.
  The Republicans nominated Andrew T. Wood, a lawyer from Mount Sterling, who had failed in earlier elections for Congress and state attorney general. Concurrently with the gubernatorial election, the state's voters would decide whether to ratify a proposed new constitution for the state in 1891. The divided Democrats had taken no stand on the document as part of their convention's platform, and Wood spent much of the campaign trying to get Brown to declare his support for or opposition to it. About six weeks before the election, Brown, sensing strong public support for the new constitution, finally came out in favor of it. For the remainder of the race, Wood touted an alleged conspiracy between Brown and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to thwart meaningful corporate regulations, but the issue failed to gain much traction.
  Both Democrats and Republicans were concerned about the presence of S. Brewer Erwin, nominee of the newly formed Populist Party, in the race; he enjoyed strong support for a third-party candidate, despite the fact that many believed his party's platform was too radical. Democrats, who were used to carrying the agrarian vote by a wide margin, were especially concerned that the Farmers' Alliance, consisting of over 125,000 members in Kentucky, would endorse Erwin. This did not occur, however, and in the general election, Brown defeated Wood by a vote of 144,168 to 116,087. Though he won the election, Brown had not won a majority of the votes; Populist Erwin captured 25,631 votes – 9 percent of the total cast – and a Prohibition candidate received 3,292 votes.
caption: Cassius M. Clay, Jr., Brown's closest competitor for the 1891 Democratic gubernatorial nomination
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