Beckham appointed Robert Worth Bingham, a young lawyer and fellow prohibitionist, as the interim mayor until elections could be held in November. Bingham eliminated grafting in the police department, closed gambling houses, and enforced blue laws that closed saloons on Sunday. The whiskey ring, therefore, announced that Beckham had forfeited the support of Louisville's legislators. In the senatorial election in 1908, three of the four Democrats who voted against Beckham were from Louisville. Following his defeat, Beckham returned to his law practice. Six years later, Beckham again attempted to win a Senate seat. The passage of the Seventeenth Amendment meant that the Senate would no longer be elected by the legislature but instead by popular vote. In the Democratic primary, Beckham defeated Augustus O. Stanley, a 12-year veteran of the House of Representatives. The Republican nominee was former Governor Augustus E. Willson. Bolstered by his support of President Woodrow Wilson, Beckham won the election by 32,000 votes. Beckham served as chairman of the Senate Committee on Expenditures in the US Department of Labor from 1915 to 1917 and on the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. In the latter position, he was influential in securing two large military training posts for Kentucky: Camp Zachary Taylor and Fort Knox. Though Camp Zachary Taylor was abandoned after World War I, Fort Knox became the home of the US Bullion Depository. After the United States entered World War I, Beckham continued to back Wilson and later supported the League of Nations. True to his prohibitionist stance, Beckham supported passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, which enacted Prohibition in the United States. The amendment was ratified and became effective in January 1920. Believing that women should be protected from involvement in politics, Beckham opposed the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women's suffrage. The amendment failed on February 10, 1919, but passed on June 4. Beckham voted against it both times. The Democrats renominated Beckham without opposition in 1920. His opponent in the general election was Republican Richard P. Ernst. Prohibition had destroyed the distilling industry and the saloon business in the state, and in areas that those industries were prominent, Beckham received more than 5,000 fewer votes than Democratic presidential nominee James M. Cox. He was also hurt by the women's vote and by his support of Wilson, who had lost popularity since Beckham's election, in 1914. Ernst won the election by fewer than 5,000 votes, winning