Funding for the party came primarily from Alexander Mitchell, a Democratic banker and railroad magnate who had already been experimenting with a third-party movement to challenge the tight control of Bourbon Democrats over the Democratic Party in Wisconsin, and Elisha W. Keyes' "Madison Regency" over the Wisconsin Republican Party there, as far back as 1870, in the form of a "People's Independent Ticket" of Democrats and Republicans, which ran nine legislative candidates statewide, as well as various local slates.
[2][3] In 1873, disaffected Republicans and formerly unaligned Grangers looking for an alternative met at the September convention (being run by leading Democrats) of the as-yet-nameless reform group nominated Democrat and Granger William Robert Taylor to the top of the ticket, with one more Liberal Republican, a couple of respected figures with no political affiliation, and the remainder Democrats.
[4] Mitchell, a conservative at heart, soon began clashing with Taylor (an ineffectual and prickly leader at best); and the Democrats who had been out of office for so long were unhappy when they were not allowed the offices they felt entitled to under the spoils system.
Bourbon Democrats, in particular, felt that the Grangers and other reform forces were denying them their share of the fruits of victory.
[5] By 1875, with Taylor having lost his bid for re-election, and a disaffected Mitchell now firmly allied with the Bourbons,[6] the coalition had begun to dissolve; Greenbackers, who advocated some of the same policies, began to run their own candidates in 1876.