He became Chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee in 1913 after the death of Frank Obadiah Briggs.

In 1917, in the administration of Governor Walter Evans Edge, Bugbee was named State Comptroller, a position he would hold for twelve years.

The paramount issue in that election year was Prohibition, since the Eighteenth Amendment had already been ratified but would not be enforced until the beginning of 1920.

In the Republican primary Bugbee faced William Nelson Runyon, who had served as Acting Governor following Edge's election to the United States Senate, and Thomas L. Raymond, mayor of Newark.

Though he was a social drinker who occasionally drank beer in public, Bugbee maintained that Prohibition must be enforced at the risk of lawlessness, even going so far as to label Edwards a Bolshevik and an anarchist.

Edwards defeated Bugbee by a 49%-46% margin, as urban residents and immigrant groups shifted to the Democratic Party as a result of the Prohibition issue.