as governor, Asa Bushnell, and a Republican legislature that elected Foraker to the Senate. McKinley supported Foraker for the Senate and Bushnell (who was of Foraker's faction) for governor; in return, the new senator-elect agreed to back McKinley's presidential ambitions. With party peace in Ohio assured, McKinley turned to the national arena. Election of 1896 Obtaining the nomination It is unclear when William McKinley began to seriously prepare a run for president. As McKinley biographer Kevin Phillips notes, "No documents, no diaries, no confidential letters to Mark Hanna (or anyone else) contain his secret hopes or veiled stratagems." From the beginning, McKinley's preparations had the participation of Hanna, whose biographer William T. Horner noted, "What is certainly true is that in 1888 the two men began to develop a close working relationship that helped put McKinley in the White House." Sherman did not run for president again after 1888, and so Hanna could support McKinley's ambitions for that office wholeheartedly. Backed by Hanna's money and organizational skills, McKinley quietly built support for a presidential bid through 1895 and early 1896. When other contenders such as Speaker Reed and Iowa Senator William B. Allison sent agents outside their states to organize Republicans in support of their candidacies, they found that Hanna's agents had preceded them. According to historian Stanley Jones in his study of the 1896 election, Hanna, on McKinley's behalf, met with the eastern Republican political bosses, such as Senators Thomas Platt of New York and Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who were willing to guarantee McKinley's nomination in exchange for promises regarding patronage and offices. McKinley, however, was determined to obtain the nomination without making deals, and Hanna accepted that decision. Many of their early efforts were focused on the South; Hanna obtained a vacation home in southern Georgia where McKinley visited and met with Republican politicians from the region. McKinley needed 453½ delegate votes to gain the nomination; he gained nearly half that number from the South and border states. Platt lamented in his memoirs, "[Hanna] had the South practically solid before some of us awakened." The bosses still hoped to deny McKinley a first-ballot majority at the convention by boosting support for local favorite son candidates such as Quay, New York Governor (and former vice president) Levi P. Morton, and Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom. Delegate-rich Illinois proved a crucial battleground, as McKinley supporters, such as Chicago businessman (and