A few years before, Will Hays had brought disciplined energy to the office of Republican national chairman. Hays's replacement, William Butler, lacked his predecessor's experience, and it fell to Coolidge himself to whip the party into shape. His prime task was to establish control over the party in order to ensure his own nomination. Through the power of patronage Coolidge consolidated his hold over Republican officeholders and office-seekers in the South, where the party was made up of little more than those whose positions were awarded through such a system. This allowed him to gain control of Southern delegates to the coming Republican convention. He also let it be known that his secretary Campbell Slemp, who favored the policy, would remove African-American Republican leaders in the South in order to attract more white voters to the party. Only California Senator Hiram Johnson challenged Coolidge in the South; Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois, potentially Coolidge's most dangerous rival for the nomination, was attending to his state after he had decided 1924 would probably be a Democratic year. When the early Alabama primary resulted in a slate contested between the Coolidge and Johnson forces, an administration-picked committee on delegates awarded Alabama to Coolidge. Johnson formally opened his campaign for the presidential nomination in Cleveland, Ohio on January 2. He delivered a sharp attack on the Republican National Committee for increasing southern delegate representation in the national convention while also criticizing Coolidge for supplying arms to the Obregón forces in Mexico. "I shall not concede," he said "that collectors of revenue, U.S. Marshals, postmasters, and other officeholders may themselves alone nominate candidates for the Presidency." Johnson later condemned inefficient enforcement of prohibition and argued against Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon's plan to reduce taxes, which he said favored the wealthiest classes. Johnson's drive began to falter almost as soon as it had begun. In appealing to the rank and file he moved even further away from the organization Republicans who would choose the nominee. Johnson, moreover, was too much a maverick for the conciliatory role demanded of a national political candidate. In the mid-1920s the major parties had little use for the nonconformists like Johnson or Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania, but Johnson in truth could not easily be placed in the political spectrum. He did oppose the administration's tax reduction program which favored higher income groups, but he spoke against the