The hopes of the Republican reformers were completely dashed, however, by the nomination of Blaine. This "gentleman from Maine" was a man of brilliant parts and the idol of large sections of the country, particularly the Middle West; but some suspicions concerning his personal integrity were widely entertained, and not without reason, by a group of influential leaders in his party. In 1876, he was charged with having shared in the corruption funds of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and as Professor Dunning cautiously puts it, "the facts developed put Mr. Blaine under grave suspicion of just that sort of wealth-getting, if nothing worse, which had ruined his colleagues in the Credit Mobilier." Moreover, Mr. Blaine's associations had been with that wing of his party which had been involved or implicated in one scandal after another. Partly on this account, he had been defeated for nomination in 1876, when he was decidedly the leading aspirant and again in 1880 when he received 285 votes in the convention. But in 1884, leaders like Senator Platt, of New York, declared "it is now Blaine's turn," and he was nominated in spite of a threatened bolt. The Democrats were fortunate in their selection of Grover Cleveland as their standard bearer. He had been mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York, but he had taken no part in national politics and had the virtue of having few enemies in that field. He was not a man of any large comprehension of the economic problems of his age, but he was in every way acceptable to financiers in New York, for he had showed his indifference to popular demands by vetoing a five-cent fare bill for the New York City elevated roads which were then being watered and manipulated by astute speculators, like Jay Gould. Moreover, Mr. Cleveland possessed certain qualities of straightforwardness and homely honesty which commended him to a nation wearied of scandalous revelations and the malodorous spoils system.