The1894 Wyoming gubernatorial election was held on November 6, 1894. Democratic GovernorJohn E. Osborne, first elected in the1892 special election, declined to seek re-election to a second term, instead aiming to be elected to the U.S. Senate.[1] In part because of a backlash against the Democratic Party owing to thePanic of 1893, Republicans won the governorship back from the Democrats, and would hold onto it until1914.
The Democratic Party nominated State SenatorWilliam H. Holliday to succeed Osborne, and adopted afree silver platform, favoring the coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1.[2] The Republican Party nominatedWilliam A. Richards, the Surveyor General for Wyoming and a formerJohnson County Commissioner, by acclamation. Its platform concurred with the Democratic Party's on free silver coinage at the same ratio and "refer[red] to the history of the past nineteen months as indicating the unfitness of democrats to rule the country[.]"[3]
Meanwhile, thePopulist Party, which had fused with the Democratic Party in several past elections in Wyoming, declined to do so again in 1894, and nominated for Governor Lewis C. Tidball, who served asSpeaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1893 to 1895 under the Democratic-Populist fusion majority.[4]
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