The question of the triple candidacy within the ranks of the Catholic National Party in the 1896 by-election to the national Assembly has already been explored by Slovene historians. Fran Erjavec wrote a classical review of the history of the Slovene Catholic movement and Janko Pleteršnik is the author of the key text on the political evolution of the Slovene political Catholicism. However, these studies drew primarily from newspaper sources while this article is largely based on the legacies available at the Archdiocese Archives in Ljubljana. On a merely personal level, the triple candidacy might be characterized as a power struggle between three rival candidates from the same political party, namely Dr. Ivan Šusteršič, Dr. Ignacij Žitnik, and Dr. Vinko Gregorič. The principal crux of the matter, however, was far more complex, which had been established already by Janko Pleterski. Rather than an ordinary political jostle between a successful layer, a dedicated priest, and a distinguished physician for a post in the Parliament in Vienna the principles at stake were much more fundamental. The main issue was whether or not the working-class fraction of the Catholic National Party should be permitted to become stronger and to potentially even organize as an independent Christian Socialist Party. In the summer of 1896 it became evident that rather than a simple confrontation between two principal orientations this was a major power struggle that determined for the following two decades the hierarchy of the party which was soon to become the strongest political body in Slovenia. This was not just a contest for the legacy of Canon Karl Klun, the first leader of the Catholic National Party, whose sudden death triggered the power struggle, but also the question of the arbitrary role within the Party of Prince Bishop Jakob Missia himself. With the support of Missia and his secretary Jožef Šiška, Ivan Šusteršič had first eliminated from the political competition Ignacij Žitnik. Next was Vinko Gregorič who had managed to obtain 102 votes at the election on September 29, 1896. The majority of votes, 161, went to Šusteršič who thus obtained his first mandate to the Viennese Parliament. He become the leader of his political party and won a place among the Austrian parliamentary elite. By supporting the winner, there was absolutely no doubt that the candidacy of Šusteršič enabled Missia to become the authority figure in the Party as well as its Supreme Arbiter.