Frank Hill of California.
Frank Hill was a member of the Mexican Senate from California. First elected to the Senate as a member of the Continentalist Party in the 1869 Mexican elections, Hill was secretly controlled by the San Francisco business consortium Kramer Associates.
Following the death of President George Vining on 12 September 1881, the Senate was called into session the next day by Secretary of State Marcos Ruíz to choose a new acting president. The Continentalists supported Ruíz, while the Liberty Party caucus supported Senator Thomas Rogers of Arizona. Hill, acting on orders from K.A., suggested as a compromise that the Mexican Cabinet rule as a corporate body until the scheduled national elections took place on September 21. Under ordinary circumstances, Hill's suggestion would have been rejected, but the U.S.M. was in the midst of a revolutionary uprising by the Moralistas, and Hill's suggestion was adopted (presumably with the help of other Senators acting under orders from K.A., although Sobel does not say so).
K.A. President Bernard Kramer's motive for preventing the selection of an acting president was to allow him to maneuver his own man, Constabulary Commandant Benito Hermión, into power. When the Cabinet met on 15 September, Hermión claimed that important Libertarians were in league with French revolutionaries, and the elections were postponed indefinitely. The Cabinet finally chose Hermión himself to serve as Chief of State of the U.S.M. for the duration of the emergency, thereby fulfilling Kramer's plans.
Sobel's source for Frank Hill's role as a tool of Bernard Kramer is Mortimer Dow's The Giants of Mexico: The Political Maneuverings of Kramer and Benedict in the Industrial Era (Mexico City, 1950).