days, and reached nearly every county. The lieutenants of the respective candidates were vigorously working in the school districts and securing support in every community. Haskell's hard-working nature led him to win the Democratic nomination. Haskell won the Democratic primary by a more than 4,000-vote majority. Frank Frantz, the Republican territorial governor, was nominated as the Republican candidate at their caucus at Tulsa. Frantz was a former Rough Rider and a friend of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who had appointed him. He was a very strong candidate for the Republican party. Haskell challenged Frantz to joint public discussions throughout the state; they discussed every problem facing administration of the new state during the campaign. In addition, two nationally prominent figures spoke at various locations: Republican presidential nominee William Howard Taft and Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. Taft's disapproval of Oklahoma's proposed constitution and his recommendation that the people vote against it seemed to increase support for the Democrats. Haskell won the gubernatorial race by more than 30,000 votes on September 17, 1907. On the same day, the voters ratified the new Oklahoma Constitution. Governor of Oklahoma On November 16, 1907, five minutes after it was known that Oklahoma had officially become a state, Guthrie Leader editor Leslie G. Niblack administered the oath of office to Haskell. The ceremony took place privately in Haskell's hotel apartments in the presence of his immediate family, Robert Latham Owen, United States Senator-elect, and Thomas Owen of Muskogee, Haskell's former political manager. Haskell's inaugural address at Guthrie, delivered on the south steps of the Carnegie Library, quickly lifted him into national prominence. Haskell's old friends William H. Murray and Robert L. Williams also came into power with the state's founding; with Murray as the state's first Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and Williams appointed, by Haskell, as the first Oklahoma Supreme Court chief justice. Haskell set the precedents for the use of executive power. During the 1st Oklahoma Legislature, Haskell delivered a message creating a commission charged with sending a message to the U.S. Congress: amending the United States Constitution to provide for the election of U.S. senators by a direct vote of the people. Although it did not occur until after he left office, his efforts, as well as the works of the Progressive-era leaders, provided for the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1912. Though