complaints of Communist infiltration, due to the party's previously loose structure. In reaction to alleged Communist involvement, the United Farmers of Ontario disaffiliated from the CCF. Mitchell unofficially led the Ontario CCF during the 1934 Ontario general election and conducted a province-wide tour during the 1937 election campaign but failed to win a seat in the Legislature. He continued as party president until 1941. Graham Spry, a publisher and broadcaster who was also a member of the LSR, served as the Ontario CCF's vice-president of its provincial council from 1934 to 1936. He was the first federal CCF candidate in Ontario, running in the September 24, 1934 by-election in Toronto East. Other prominent members were Elmore Philpott, a former Liberal. Philpott joined the CCF in 1933 and became president of the Ontario Association of CCF Clubs but resigned in March 1934 over the A. E. Smith affair that had caused the UFO to leave as well. Philpott rejoined the Liberal Party in 1935. The disagreement was in regards to how much support the fledgling CCF should give Smith, leader of the Canadian Labour Defence League, who had been charged with sedition for claiming that the state had attempted to assassinate imprisoned Communist Party of Canada leader Tim Buck. The CLDC was a communist front group. Woodsworth, and the Ontario CCF provincial council, opposed the CCF having any formal links with it or any other communist group. Some individual CCFers ignored this policy as did one section of the Ontario CCF, which was expelled. Nevertheless, Philpott and the UFO saw the Smith affair as evidence that the CCF had been infiltrated by Communists and left. The issue of what relationship the CCF should have with the Communist Party came to the fore again in 1936 when the party voted to ban any united front with Communists, over the objections of prominent CCFers such as East York reeve Arthur Henry Williams. Electoral breakthrough At the Ontario CCF's tenth annual convention in Toronto, the first leadership election was held. Two candidates came forward: Toronto lawyer and Ontario CCF vice-president Ted Jolliffe, and union activist and former Ontario CCF Youth Movement organizer Murray Cotterill. On April 4, 1942, Jolliffe won the election, but the voting results were not announced. The newly created Leader position's role was political and legislative, while internal CCF affairs and administration would remain the president's domain. The party achieved a