he remained active in politics, "managing Comer's 1904 campaign ... and serving as chair of the State Democratic Executive Committee in 1914, during which time he helped write a new election law replacing runoff elections with a first- and second-choice option ballot system." Graves lost his first campaign for governor in 1922, but four years later, with the secret endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan, he was elected to his first term as governor. Almost certainly Graves was the Exalted Cyclops (chapter president) of the Montgomery chapter of the Klan, but both Graves and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, another Alabama Klan member, were more opportunists than ideologues, politicians who used the temporary strength of the Klan to further their careers. After receiving solid gold "passports" from the Klan, Graves and Black were collectively known in some Alabama circles as "The Gold Dust Twins." As governor, Graves earned a reputation as a reformer, abolishing the convict leasing system and raising taxes on public utilities, railways, and coal and iron companies. The new revenue was used to expand educational and public health facilities, increase teachers' salaries and veterans' pensions, fund an ambitious road-building program, and improve port facilities in Mobile. "To maintain his popularity among the farmers in northern Alabama and the working classes, Graves made good on his commitment to New Deal legislation, winning a reputation as one of the most progressive governors in the South." In 1928 he hosted a delegation of British Parliament members, including Richard Briscoe, George Newton, 1st Baron Eltisley, Robert Bourne, Hugh Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood, Charles Oman and Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple. Receiving these British leaders in Alabama was largely Graves' idea and was intended to improve diplomatic relations and economic ties between the United States and Great Britain. During his second gubernatorial administration he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's "court packing" plan and Hugo Black's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1937, when Black's ties to the Klan were debated in Congress, Graves noted his own previous membership as well, a membership that had been publicly revealed when he resigned from the organization in 1928. Graves appointed his wife, Dixie Bibb Graves, to serve the remainder of Black's term. She thus became Alabama's first woman U.S. senator. Graves made many successful trips to Washington to secure funds for Alabama, which he called "plum-tree-shaking expeditions," and President Roosevelt appointed him to