 A moderate, he was elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1867.Three years later, he accepted an appointment from a fellow Ohio politician and former general, President Ulysses S. Grant, as the governor of the Montana Territory, but only after first refusing it because the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the Ohio Legislature depended upon his vote, which would be lost if he vacated his seat.Potts served until 1883.