The 1899 Kentucky gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 1899, to choose the 33rd governor of Kentucky. The incumbent, Republican William O’Connell Bradley, was term-limited and unable to seek re-election. The Democratic Party chose state Senator William Goebel as its nominee. Republicans nominated state Attorney General William S. Taylor, although Governor Bradley favored another candidate and lent Taylor little support.
About 1899 Kentucky gubernatorial election in brief
The 1899 Kentucky gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 1899, to choose the 33rd governor of Kentucky. The incumbent, Republican William O’Connell Bradley, was term-limited and unable to seek re-election. The Democratic Party chose state Senator William Goebel as its nominee. Republicans nominated state Attorney General William S. Taylor, although Governor Bradley favored another candidate and lent Taylor little support in the ensuing campaign. In the general election, Taylor won by a vote of 193,714 to 191,331. The election results were challenged on grounds of voter fraud, but surprisingly, the state Board of Elections certified Taylor’s victory. A total of sixteen people were charged in connection with the assassination. Five went to trial; two of those were acquitted. Each of the remaining three were convicted in trials fraught with irregularities and were eventually pardoned by subsequent governors. This election marked the beginning of nearly thirty years of true, two-party competition in Kentucky politics. A powerful Democratic foe of Bradley had begun his rise to power in the Kentucky Senate. Kenton County’s WilliamGoebel became the leader of a new group of young Democrats who were seen as enemies of large corporations, and friends of the working man. Goebal was known as aloof and calculating. Unmarried and with few close friends of either gender, he was singularly driven by political power. GoEBel was shot by an unknown assassin while entering the state capitol on January 30, 1900. He died three days later on February 2.
Lieutenant Governor J. C. W. Beckham ascended to the office of governor, and he and Taylor waged a protracted court battle over the governorship. Beckham won the case on appeal, and Taylor fled to Indiana to escape prosecution as an accomplice in Goebeel’s murder. The identity of Goeble’s assassin remains a mystery. The law created a Board of Election Commissioners, appointed by the General Assembly, who were responsible for choosing election commissioners in all of Kentucky’s counties and were empowered to decide disputed elections. Three Democratic candidates had announced intentions to run for governor in 1899—Goeble, former Kentucky Attorney General P.W. Ellis, and William J. Hardin, a native of Mercer County. The Republican candidate, Thomas S. Pettit, had the backing of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the state’s agricultural interests. He won the election by just under 9,000 votes. The report was accepted, Taylor was deposed, and Goebels was sworn into office on January 31. The next day he was assassinated by the same assassin who had killed his wife in 1894. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, John Y. Brown, a former Kentucky attorney general and former Kentucky Supreme Court chief justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. The name of the Republican candidate for governor was William Hardin. The current governor is William O. Bradley, who was re-elected on November 8, 1901. The last governor to be elected in 1899 was William O’Connell Bradley.
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