By 1910, the
South Carolina Democratic Party had split into two factions: the well-to-do farmers with ties to
Clemson College, and the tenant farmers who largely did not benefit from many of the proposals instituted by
Benjamin Tillman and his followers. Many of these poor farmers escaped the fields to the relative prosperity of a mill town.
Coleman Livingston Blease, a lawyer from
Newberry, sought to portray himself as the candidate for the downtrodden and oppressed white man who had not benefited from the Tillman era. Blease and prohibitionist candidate
Claudius Cyprian Featherstone emerged as the front runners in the Democratic
primary on August 30. Featherstone and his conservative allies attacked Blease for his coarse behavior, similar to
A.C. Haskell's attacks on Tillman in the
gubernatorial election of 1890, but once again the attacks only strengthened the candidacy of the antagonist. On September 13, Blease won by just over 5,000 votes in the
runoff to essentially become the next governor of South Carolina because there was no opposition in the general election.
^Glashan, Roy R. (1979). "South Carolina gubernatorial elections". American Governors and Gubernatorial Elections, 1775-1978. Meckler Books. pp. 284–285.
ISBN0-930466-17-9.
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