[66] The Republican party remained divided, and in the general election Cleveland emerged the victor, with 535,318 votes to Republican nominee Charles J. Folger's 342,464.[67] Cleveland's margin of victory was, at the time, the largest in a contested New York election; the Democrats also picked up seats in both houses of the New York State Legislature.[68]
Cleveland brought his opposition to needless spending to the governor's office; he promptly sent the legislature eight vetoes in his first two months in office.[69] The first to attract attention was his veto of a bill to reduce the fares on New York City elevated trains to five cents.[70] The bill had broad support because the trains' owner, Jay Gould, was unpopular, and his fare increases were widely denounced.[71] Cleveland, however, saw the bill as unjust—Gould had taken over the railroads when they were failing and had made the system solvent again.[72] Moreover, Cleveland believed that altering Gould's franchise would violate the Contract Clause of the federal Constitution.[72] Despite the initial popularity of the fare-reduction bill, the newspapers praised Cleveland's veto.