It was widely known that Brown desired election to the U.S. Senate when his gubernatorial term expired in 1896. The leading Democratic candidates to succeed Brown as governor were his old rivals, Cassius M. Clay, Jr. and Parker Watkins Hardin, and Brown believed he would need his eventual successor's support to secure the Senate seat. Having already alienated Hardin and his free silver allies, Brown threw his support to Clay. Family tragedy would soon remove his interest in the race, however. On October 30, 1894, Brown's teenage daughter Susan died of tuberculosis. A few months later, his son, Archibald Dixon Brown, divorced his wife; it was subsequently discovered that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair. Acting on an anonymous tip, his lover's husband found the couple at a brothel in Louisville; drawing his pistol, he shot his wife and Archibald Brown, killing them both. Of the series of family tragedies, Governor Brown wrote to Clay, "I shall not be a candidate for the Senate. The calamities of my children, which have recently befallen, have utterly unfitted me for the contest. My grief is so severe that, like a black vampire of the night, it seems to have sucked dry the very arteries and veins of my ambition." Clay went on to lose the nomination to Hardin. Brown refused to endorse Hardin, and the fractured Democratic party watched as the Republicans elected William O. Bradley, the party's first-ever governor of Kentucky. Despite Brown's proclaimed lack of interest in the Senate seat, he received one vote during the tumultuous 1896 Senate election to replace Senator J. C. S. Blackburn.