Return To Idaho
Around 1879, McConnell had begun investing in the growing town of Moscow, Idaho and in 1884 he moved his family there. The general store he opened with a partner in Moscow was for many years considered the finest in the region. When leaders convened a constitutional convention, preparatory to Idaho statehood, McConnell represented Latah County.
After Idaho became at state on July 3, 1890, McConnell was one of its first U.S. Senators. He served only a short term, which was meant to get the state "in sync" with a normal election cycle. For a time, the new state actually had three Senators-elect: McConnell, Fred T. Dubois, and "Judge" William H. Clagett. The Senate had to vote on which of the two besides McConnell they would seat – they chose Dubois.
McConnell's term ended in March 1891, and he decided to run for Governor as the candidate for the Republican Party. In a state-level reflection of political turmoil across the country, he won with only a plurality (40.6%) of the vote: candidates for the Democratic and Populist parties split 58% of the rest. A Prohibition Party candidate polled about 1.3%. When he ran for re-election, he won in a similar manner, polling 41.5% of the votes with the Democrats and Populists splitting most of the remaining votes. After his first gubernatorial election, McConnell ended his involvement with the store in Moscow and moved to Boise. There, in 1895, his daughter Mary (or sometimes Mamie) married attorney William E. Borah, who would later serve as a U.S. Senator for nearly 33 years.
Read more about this topic: William J. Mc Connell
Famous quotes containing the words return to and/or return:
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down; but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)