Florence encouraged her husband in his first political run for the state senate in 1899. She managed the finances and fended off unsurprising objections from her father, who enlisted Mark Hanna for help, though Warren was ultimately elected. Florence observed the legislature from the balcony and frequently made trips to newspaper offices to win her husband's good coverage and observe their operations. She also began her custom of consulting with an astrologer during this first stint in Columbus. Encouraging her husband to be pragmatic and not to alienate anyone, he was reelected in 1901. In 1903, he was elected lieutenant governor. Journalist Mark Sullivan wrote of Florence, "As a wife, she had that particular kind of eagerness to make good which, in a personality that is at once superficial and unsure of itself, sometimes manifests itself in too strenuous activity, a too steady staying on the job."