Being in politics on the most commendable plane McKinley was a politician of shrewdness without cunning and he campaigned in the strongest way without descending to questionable methods. His power as a campaigner was of the kind that does its work steadily, unfalteringly and irresistibly, straightforwardly and fairly.
Thus, in 1876, when McKinley was first set forth as a candidate for Congress, he had three rivals from his own county for the nomination, but the choice fell upon him at the first ballot, over all other candidates. Being elected, he was rechosen at each recurring convention and election for fourteen years, and always representing the district in which his county was, though it was not always the same district otherwise, for his opponents, not relishing the prominent and important place that he had taken in Congress, gerrymandered the district three times in that fourteen years hoping thus to defeat him, but in that they failed signally until the last time that game was played, but the defeat was only of a temporary character and was pitifully unsuccessful in keeping McKinley out of politics.
The first attempt to change the McKinley district resulted in the formation of a district that would have naturally presented a majority for the opposition of 1,800. But this McKinley overcame with a majority of 1,300.
In 1882, when McKinley’s party suffered everywhere and especially in his state, this resourceful man managed nevertheless to hold his own quite safely.
In 1884 the opposition gerrymandered the district again, but McKinley was not to be downed, and came to the front with a majority of 1,500.
In 1890, the very year in which the McKinley bill became a law, the district being again gerrymandered, and Stark County—that in which McKinley lived—having been districted with other counties that gave a majority for the opposition of 2,000, and McKinley’s opponent being ex-Lieutenant Warwick, a prominent and exceedingly popular man, in the fierce battle that ensued McKinley was defeated by 363 votes. The figures showed, however, that the vote was the fullest ever cast in the counties that now composed the district, and that McKinley received 2,500 more votes than had been cast for President Harrison in 1888, when Harrison was elected.