successful. He defeated the farmer Reuben Kolb and several others in the Democratic convention after several ballots and Republican candidate Benjamin M. Long handily in the general election. Jones was the Governor of Alabama from 1890 to 1894. In his first two-year term as governor, Jones proposed a constitutional amendment to allow long legislative sessions and local communities to levy taxes to finance education and internal improvements. He also opposed contrivances to disenfranchise blacks, such as educational and property requirements, and he denounced proposals to limit tax revenues from white taxpayers for white schools as unconstitutional. Although by no means a racial-egalitarian, Jones also opposed Alabama's convict leasing system despite the propaganda that it helped establish white supremacy as well as a frugal state government Ironically, Jones both assumed office during a strike by coal miners who opposed unfair competition from leased convicts, which he initially resolved with the United Mine Workers by appointing a health and safety commissioner, and ended his second term dealing with a strike by Birmingham miners against the Tennessee Coal Iron and Railroad Company in which he called out state troops after hiring of black scabs provoked violence; the strike was widened by Eugene V. Debs to join the Pullman Strike. Despite Seay's boasts after cutting state taxes, the state was also nearly bankrupt, and the legislature, during his second term, refused to increase corporate taxes, as Jones had suggested. Politics proved tumultuous, and Jones's attempts at replacing his former political rival Reuben Kolb as agricultural commissioner in his first term nearly proved pyrrhic. The Alabama Supreme Court approved the governor's new agricultural commissioner appointee when Kolb refused to vacate at the end of his term, and Kolb ran as an independent for governor in the next general election and narrowly lost to Jones, just like in the Democratic primary, which Kolb attributed to Jones's over-representation in the state's Black Belt. Jones would continue to dispute Kolb's contention that the 1892 election had been stolen until his death. Alabama House Speaker Frank L. Pettus and Senate President John C Compton were also from the Black Belt and ignored Kolb's investigation request. Ironically, given his overt white supremacist language, Kolb's attempts to link his Farmers' Alliance with the Populist candidate for president, former U.S. Army General James B. Weaver, may also have doomed his candidacy, many Alabamians supporting neither the Republican presidential candidate, Benjamin Harrison nor