Kenna unseated Gleason in 1897 to take office in the City Council, alongside Carter Harrison Jr. for the mayoralty. In the meantime Yerkes had tired of buying streets individually in the city and wanted to go to the Illinois General Assembly in order to get the State to grant him franchises across the City. This united the reformers, who felt that the City was being deprived of tax dollars, and the corrupt aldermen, who saw their sources of profit vanish, to oppose Yerkes's efforts. Harrison was the leader of this opposition, but while he made Coughlin his leader in the Council he felt as if reformers were better suited to directly attack Yerkes. He decided to make Coughlin the leader of opposition of a bill in the General Assembly to allow the seven gas companies of Chicago to merge into one and form a monopoly. In such capacities Coughlin won some begrudging admiration from the reformers, although he did not fully believe in reform.