Senator Marion Butler wrote in his newspaper, The Caucasian: Simmons then decided to build a campaign around the issue of white supremacy, knowing that the question would overwhelm all other issues. He began working with the Secret Nine, who volunteered to use their connections and funds to advance his efforts. He developed a strategy to recruit men who could "Write, Speak, and Ride." "Writers" were those who could create propaganda in the media; "speakers" were those who would be powerful orators; and "riders" were those who could ride a horse and be intimidating. He also had Tom Jarvis relay a promise to "the large corporations": if the Democrats won, the party would not raise their taxes. In March 1898, after realizing that the Raleigh-based News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, which represented both the liberal and conservative wings in the Democratic party, were "together in the same bed shouting 'nigger'", Simmons met with Josephus "Jody" Daniels, the editor of the News & Observer, who also had the 21-year-old cartoonist Norman Jennett (nicknamed "Sampson Huckleberry") on staff, and with Charles Aycock. The men met at the Chatawka Hotel in New Bern and began planning how to execute the Democratic campaign strategy. Simmons began by recruiting media outlets sympathetic to white supremacy, such as The Caucasian and The Progressive Farmer, which cynically called the Populists the "white man's party", while touting the party's alliance with black people. He also recruited aggressive, dynamic, and militant young white supremacists to help his effort. These publications presented black people as being "insolent", accused them of exhibiting ill-will and disrespect for whites in public, labeled them as corrupt and unjust, constantly laid claims about black men's alleged interest in white women, and accused white Fusionists allied with them of supporting "negro domination". Simmons summarized the party's platform when he stated: Party leader Daniel Schenck added: On November 20, 1897, following a Democratic Executive Committee meeting in Raleigh, the first statewide call for white unity was issued. Written by Francis D. Winston, it called on whites to unite and "re-establish Anglo-Saxon rule and honest government in North Carolina". He called Republican and Populist rule anarchy, evil, and apocalyptic, setting a vision for the Democrats to be the saviorsthe redeemersthat would rescue the state from "tyranny". Alfred M. Waddell Simmons created a speakers bureau, stacking it with talented orators whom he could deploy to deliver the message