The Prohibition state convention met on June 30 at Syracuse, New York, and nominated Prof John Kline, of Penn Yan, for governor, Rev.

John A. Sayles, of East Aurora, for lieutenant governor; Henry Wilbur, editor of True Reform, of New York City, for secretary of state; Charles Mills, of Sodus, for comptroller; De Witt Hooker, of Syracuse, for treasurer; Francis Stephen M. Wing, of Canastota, for attorney general; and Albert W. Pierson, of Niagara Falls, for state engineer.

[2] The Republican bosses Thomas C. Platt and Benjamin B. Odell Jr., were still busy to compose a ticket on September 25, but had already agreed upon Theodore Roosevelt to head it, against the wish of Governor Frank S. Black to be re-nominated.

[6] The ticket was a compromise between the three biggest Democratic bosses: David B. Hill from upstate, Richard Croker of Tammany, and Hugh McLaughlin of Brooklyn.

To avoid being ousted from power in an uncertain three-cornered election, the Republican bosses offered Roosevelt the nomination, and suddenly on September 24, he declined to allow his name to be used on the independent ticket.

[12] The petition to file the independent ticket was taken to the Secretary of State's office on October 12 purporting to represent nominations by the Citizens Union.

On this ticket were Theodore Roosevelt - already nominated by the Republicans state convention in September - for governor; Thomas M. Osborne for lieutenant governor; Oren E. Wilson, Mayor of Albany 1894-1895, for secretary of state; Thomas E. Kinney, Mayor of Utica, for comptroller; Edmund H. Titchener, of Binghamton, for treasurer; Frederick W. Hinrichs, the Gold Democrats nominee for lieutenant governor in 1896, for attorney general; and George E. Waring Jr., of New York City, for state engineer.