announced his candidacy for Governor of Illinois on January 17, 1912. He won the Democratic Party primary election held on April 9 of that year. The main thrust of his campaign attack was on what he called "Jackpot Government". In the general election, Dunne defeated the incumbent governor, Governor Charles S. Deneen in the fall of 1912. Dunne and the Democrats benefited from the split in the ranks of the Republican Party which divided by supporters of the incumbent President William Howard Taft and the Progressives who supported the third party candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt. He was inaugurated as Governor of Illinois on February 3, 1913. He moved his family to the Illinois Governor's Mansion in Springfield, Illinois. As governor, he met with many visitors and guests. Former U.S. President, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was a visitor to meet with Dunne at the Illinois Governor's Mansion while Dunne was governor. As governor Dunne championed numerous progressive reforms, including Women's Suffrage, prison reforms, major infrastructural improvements, the creation of the Public Utility Commission, the Efficiency and Economy Commission, the Legislative Reference Bureau, and he also expanded the state's responsibility for overseeing workman's compensation benefits and teachers' pensions. In 1913, Governor Dunne signed into law a bill that gave women in the State of Illinois the right to vote for President of the United States. This made Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi to give women the right to vote for the U.S. Presidency. This was six (6) years before the passage of the 19th Amendment. In November 1915, Dunne designated state Senator Stephen D. Canady of Hillsboro to appear as his representative on the train car along with the Liberty Bell as it passed through southern Illinois on its nationwide tour returning to Pennsylvania from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. After that trip, the Liberty Bell returned to Pennsylvania and will not be moved again. Post-gubernatorial career After finishing his term as governor, Dunne remained politically active. In 1921, he helped found an organization called the "National Unity Council" to combat the Ku Klux Klan. In 1919, Dunne was appointed by the Irish Race Convention to serve on the American Commission on Irish Independence. As part of this commission, Dunne traveled to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 in order to voice Irish-American desires for an independent Irish nation. During his stay in Europe, he also visited Ireland