In 1901, Higgins was elected to the Rhode Island General Assembly, representing Pawtucket. The next year, at the age of 26, he was elected to the first of four consecutive terms as mayor of Pawtucket.
1906 gubernatorial campaign
In 1906, Higgins was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Rhode Island, challenging incumbent Republican Governor George H. Utter. The New York Times attributed the popularity of the "boy Mayor of Pawtucket" to "his personality and private character. He does not drink or smoke." His acceptance speech echoed the Democratic convention platform, attacking corruption and the "boss system" of government, pledging an eight-hour workday for state and municipal workers, and endorsing the election of Rhode Island's United States Senators by direct vote. Higgins' candidacy was endorsed by Colonel Robert Hale Ives Goddard and the short-lived Lincoln Party, which had been organized around Goddard's bid to succeed George P. Wetmore in the U.S. Senate and "smash the state machine". After a campaign which seized on public discontent with the influence of lobbyist and Rhode Island Republican PartyCentral Committee chairman, General Charles R. Brayton, Higgins was elected over Utter by a margin of 1,238 votes, becoming Rhode Island's youngest governor, and its first Catholic governor.
Governor of Rhode Island
Higgins was sworn into office on January 3, 1907. In his inaugural speech, he built upon the themes of his campaign, warning that "the evils of lobbying" had compromised the state government to "a disgraceful extent," and that the power of lobbying had become "an exclusive and oppressive monopoly" in the hand of Brayton, a "coarse and venal boss" who was operating out of the Rhode Island State House offices of High Sheriff of Providence County, General Hunter C. White. Higgins' attacks on "Braytonism" were echoed in The New York Times, which in February published an article on "Rhode Island's Despot," alleging that "for forty years Brayton's control over the General Assembly, and consequently over all legislation, has been practically absolute". In March 1907, Higgins wrote an open letter about Brayton to White: "Year in and year out he has occupied and used your office for his vile purposes, with your knowledge and consent... clean this moral and political pest out of your office." White took no action, but in July Brayton resigned from the Executive Committee of the State Central Committee of the Republican Party. In November 1907, Higgins won a second one-year term over a challenge by Republican Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island, Frederick H. Jackson. Higgins declined to seek a third term as governor.
