The K of L and the more radical Central Labor Union, led by Paul Grottkau, agitated heavily for an eight-hour day.
[2] In 1886, after the Bay View massacre of a pro-eight-hour rally in Milwaukee and Haymarket affair in Chicago, anti-labor sentiment rose dramatically into a national "red scare".
[2] In response to this repression, the K of L and Schilling took control of the People's Party, which quickly denounced the use of violence by both "fanatical anarchists" and "corrupt politicians" and demanded that "land, money, the means of communication and all public improvements [....] should be owned and controlled by the people.
"[2] The Haymarket affair and other red scare repressions led to wave of pro-labor organizing.
[3] Historian Leon Fink, describing this era, said that it "may still stand as the American worker’s single greatest push for political power".
Kroeger was such a serious threat that the Republicans and Democrats united to run Thomas Brown as a fusion candidate against him.
Radical Socialist Labor Party (SLP) candidate Colin Campbell, backed by Paul Grottkau (imprisoned editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung) garnered 964 votes, just enough to allow Kroeger to win if they had gone to him instead.
The local ULP also endorsed John M. Clayton, whose election was fraudulently stolen and who was assassinated.