 He resigned in the late spring of 1876, having been nominated in February for governor by the Republican party.Members of the reform wing distrusted Orth automatically, because he stood well with Senator Oliver Morton's political machine, and they doubted his personal integrity.They were strengthened in their suspicions when a newspaper charged him with participating in a ring of speculators that shook down Venezuelan claimants in disputes between injured parties in Venezuela and the United States and with lobbying the Congress to confirm those claims.