General James H. Wilson rebuffed Cuban demands for universal suffrage as 'rot'. Furthermore, he stated that "[s]uffrage, like any other privilege of citizenship, should be based upon qualifications and its exercise not permitted merely because one happens to belong to the male species." The U.S. Secretary of War Elihu Root thought that limited suffrage would be useful to ensure that Cuba would not fall into "perpetual revolutions" and instead would provide a stable conservative leadership for "control of Cubans by Cubans". The electoral process was marred by irregularities. In the province of Las Villas, there was a campaign of violent intimidation carried out by the party of the provincial governor José Miguel Gómez, the Federal Republican Party of Las Villas. The campaign successfully forced all potential competitors away from the polls, and the party won the election in the province by default. During the entire first half of 1900, Military Governor Wood himself worked behind the scenes for the sake of supporting pro-American conservative sectors, trying to cobble together viable conservative electoral coalitions. In many parts of the islands the elections were a success for the "independentista" Cuban National Party, much to the dismay of the U.S. administration. In Havana, the Cuban National Party candidate Alejandro Rodríguez won with 12,027 votes. The electoral victories of the "independentista" sector emboldened pro-independence Cubans to exert more pressure on the Americans, for example through raising demands for speedy implementation of the Joint Resolution. In Santiago de Cuba, the Republican candidate Tómas Padró Griñán was elected. In Matanzas, the elections were won by Republicans. The manning of polling stations and counting of votes were done by Cubans, and U.S. soldiers were not present at the polling stations. However, after the elections the elected mayor had to swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Military Government before taking office. After the holding of the municipal polls, the military government issued another military order on July 25, 1900, convening elections to a Constituent Assembly. Less than a year later, on June 1, 1901, fresh local elections were held.