A powerful orator, Braithwaite was elected Grand President of the Manitoba Patrons at their first provincial convention in November, and held this position until January 1897.
Originally a Liberal, Braithwaite encouraged the party to run its own candidates in provincial and federal elections to protest existing political corruption.
Braithwaite frequently quarrelled with Henry Clay, the hardline editor of the Patrons newspaper whose intemperate comments often drove financial supporters away from the party.
(Clay recalled the event differently - according to him, he was with the paper until the end when he signed the printing press over to the print-shop employees to pay their wages owing.
)[1] In early 1895, Braithwaite travelled to Toronto to help create the platform of a national Patrons party, which advocated agrarian reform, prohibition and woman's suffrage.
In the 1896 federal election, Braithwaite contested the riding of Macdonald on a platform of non-sectarian schools, electoral reform, agricultural interests, free trade, public utilities ownership, prohibition and universal suffrage.
The Patrons effectively ceased to exist as a viable political group in Manitoba after this time, although many of their policies would later resurface in the Progressive Party of Canada.