Kehoe was appointed in 1925 to temporarily fill the position of town clerk, but he was defeated in the April 1926 election. This public rejection by the community angered him. Ellsworth wrote that he thought that this defeat was the reason why Kehoe had planned his "murderous revenge"; using the bombings to destroy the Bath Consolidated School and kill the community's children and many of its members. In "Bath Massacre", Arnie Bernstein cites Robert D. Hare's Psychopathy Checklist and says that Andrew Kehoe "fits the profile all too well".