friendship with Conkling. Eschewing elective office, Platt then devoted his attention to mending fences and rebuilding the machine. He served as a delegate to several state and national Republican conventions, and was a member of the New York Republican State Committee and Republican National Committee. By 1887, Platt was the de facto leader of New York's Republicans, where he developed a reputation as the "easy boss." Platt supports Half-Breed Blaine for president During the 1884 United States presidential election, the Republican convention nominated Half-Breed leader James G. Blaine to lead the party ticket. This resulted in an intraparty schism, with a "Mugwump" faction refusing to support Blaine and instead backing Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland. Although Platt had allied with the Stalwarts which fiercely opposed Blaine (who long had a personal rivalry with Conkling), he supported the nominee for the general election. Blaine ultimately lost the race to Cleveland, which in part was attributed to the influence of Harper's Weekly Mugwump cartoonist Thomas Nast. Return to the Senate, 1897–1909 Sixteen years after Platt's resignation, he was elected to the a second time a U.S. Senator from New York in January 1897 and was re-elected in January 1903. This time, he served from March 4, 1897, to March 3, 1909. He was Chairman of the Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (in the 55th Congress). He was on the Committee on Printing (in the 56th through 60th Congresses), the Committee on Cuban Relations (in the 59th Congress) and the Committee on Interoceanic Canals (in the 59th Congress). He also served on the Republican National Committee. On January 21, 1897, Platt's photograph appeared in the New York Tribune as "the first halftone reproduction to appear in a mass circulation daily paper," according to Time-Life's Photojournalism. To increase his power as a political boss, Platt steered passage of the Greater New York bill in 1898. The bill incorporated the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island into the city, thereby creating New York City as it exists today. Platt reluctantly supported Theodore Roosevelt's candidacy for Governor of New York in 1898 in the immediate aftermath of Roosevelt's fame leading the Rough Riders in the Spanish–American War earlier that year. Once elected, Governor Roosevelt was independently minded and crusaded against machines and corruption, most notably refusing to reappoint Louis F. Payn as state Insurance Superintendent because he was widely seen as a corrupt associate