In 1894 Coughlin was unanimously nominated as the Democratic nominee in what Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan would later call "the briefest political convention in Chicago's history" and was reported by the "Chicago Herald" as lasting "only a few minutes as the delegates were in a hurry to get away to attend a prize fight." However, rival Billy Skakel, who specialized in offering and soliciting gambling on fraudulent stock quotations and hated Coughlin for allowing local Prince Hal Varnell to cut into his turf, formed his own Independent Democratic Party. Working with Sol van Praag, who had ambitions of his own to rule the 1st ward, he ran as a rival to Coughlin for the race