Mooney, and his alleged accomplice, Warren Billings. Both Mooney and Billings were convicted, though critics said later that the trial was conducted in a lynch mob atmosphere. Governor Stephens supported both convictions. However, international sympathy for Mooney quickly spread, making him one of the United States's most famous political prisoners. There was national and international pressure on Stephens to intervene for Mooney. President Woodrow Wilson personally telegraphed Stephens to ask him to review the case against Mooney. Stephens yielded, but only slightly, commuting Mooney's death sentence to life imprisonment. Despite this slight clemency, militant labor radicals continued to pressure Stephens, resulting in threats, and eventually, actions of violence. On the evening of December 17, 1917, a dynamite bomb exploded at the foot of the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento. Although Stephens was not injured, the explosion caused considerable damage to the kitchen. Radicals from the IWW were later blamed for the attack. In an unrelated threat, labor radicals also threatened to destroy both the California State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion if a $50,000 ransom was not met. Stephens responded to threats from labor radicals, and to subversion worries during World War I, with the California Criminal Syndicalism Act, targeting radical labor unionists and their advocacy of violent confrontation with state authorities. Despite numerous threats on his life and state property, Stephens refused to pardon Thomas Mooney for the remainder of his administration. Mooney was eventually pardoned by left-wing Democratic governor Culbert Olson in 1939. A Progressive like his predecessor Hiram Johnson, Stephens chose not to expand on the reforms made by Johnson. Instead, Stephens sought to keep the electoral and bureaucratic reforms already put in place. In the 1918 state general elections, Stephens won renomination for the Republican Party, campaigning on a platform to solidify Progressive reforms within the state government. He easily won the election, trouncing independent and former Democratic candidate Theodore A. Bell by a 20% margin of the vote. Other candidates included Republican Mayor of San Francisco James Rolph, who appeared as a write-in candidate at 3%, and Henry H. Roser of the Socialist Party of America with 4.2%. After his successful election to the governorship to a full four-year term, Stephens grew increasingly concerned over the needs of returning World War I veterans. Stephens argued that the state government had a mandate to provide benefits for returning veterans, such as government-sponsored retraining and funds to help