Senator Marshall had made a friendly call upon Jacqueline Kent at the time of her nomination, protesting in a fatherly fashion against her permitting herself to be put up as a candidate.
Afterwards he declared he had the right to oppose her election in favor of Peter Stevens. This right Jack never disputed. Mrs. Marshall led the opposition against Jacqueline Kent among the conservative women in Wyoming.
In fact, among her own family and her more intimate friends and acquaintances Jack possessed only three staunch and always enthusiastic supporters, her own small son, Jimmie Kent, who accompanied her to most of the day-time political meetings, Billy Preston, the young Kentucky mountaineer who after soldiering in France had decided to try his fate as a cowboy in Wyoming, and John Marshall, Senator Marshall's son.
Billy Preston assured Jack that he was making it his business to see that every cowboy in Wyoming voted for her. John Marshall declared that he proposed showing his father who had the greater influence in the state. He protested that his father had lost all chivalry by assisting a man when a woman was his opponent. If he would not descend to the tactics employed by Alec Robertson, his father's secretary and Peter Stevens' campaign manager, nevertheless, he was backing Mrs. Kent to win against all odds.
"The boy is falling in love with Jacqueline Kent, I am afraid, my dear, as he has never showed the slightest interest in politics in his entire life until recently," Senator Marshall confided to his wife toward the latter part of the summer.
"Nonsense, Mrs. Kent is older than John, and is not an especially attractive woman!"
And although Senator Marshall did not agree with his wife, he pretended to accept her opinion.