Nelson Johnson - Boardwalk Empire - The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

To no one’s surprise, the Macksey Committee learned that votes were purchased on a broad scale, primarily in the Northside. One witness called by the committee testified of his confrontation with a Republican poll worker who was doling out cash to African-American voters outside one of the voting places. “You are getting that man to vote in somebody’s name. Every one of you ought to go to prison.” To which he was told, “If you don’t get out of here they [referring to the Blacks] will trample you to death.” The dialogue continued, “I said, ‘Before they trample me to death there will be a few dead negroes here.’ He says, ‘Don’t call them niggers.’ I said, ‘I didn’t call them niggers, I called them negroes, but if you are buying your votes you are worse than a nigger for buying votes.’”

There were key leaders of the Northside who were part of Kuehnle’s organization. One such poll worker was discussed before the Macksey Committee. “So after that, men came out from the polls and would hand the man a slip; he was a very well dressed darkey, a dude, rather, he was too well-dressed for his color, he walked up the street with them and he would take out his roll and give them money. I saw him do that time and time again.”

In all, there were approximately 3,000 fraudulent votes cast in Atlantic City in the election of 1910, but there’s more to the story. In one district, two persistent Democratic challengers who protested fraudulent votes were drugged. They were given drinking water with a “shoe fly” in it. Shoe fly is a concoction of tartar emetic, which induces vomiting, and eleatarium, which causes diarrhea. It is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. One drink of a shoe fly and a Democratic challenger was done for the day. New registrants were added to the voter registration books on Election Day by the officials at the polls. Ballot boxes were removed from the view of the general public and challengers who objected were forcibly removed from the polls by local police officers.

Kuehnle’s people engaged in a practice known as “colonizing” voters, which involved hundreds of fictitious voters being registered at local hotels. The fraud was so widespread and well organized that it couldn’t possibly have occurred without a close working relationship between the Republican organization and dozens of small hotel and boardinghouse owners of Atlantic City. Additionally, many transient seasonal workers of various hotels, restaurants, shops, and arcades, referred to as “floaters,” registered to vote in Atlantic City by using their place of summer employment as their address. They returned from out-of-town to cast their vote on Election Day. That year, hundreds of floaters were given train fare and paid to come back to town to vote for Vivian Lewis.

The Commodore himself was called before the committee and was asked what he knew of “the padded registration in Atlantic City last Fall.” In response to a question concerning his involvement in voting fraud, Kuehnle replied, “Why my instructions to the workers was that we didn’t want any padded lists, because we had enough Republican votes in Atlantic City and county to win the election at any time.” Despite the Commodore’s testimony, the Macksey Committee had more than enough information to prove widespread voter fraud.

The next step for Governor Wilson was to convert the committee’s report into criminal indictments. That wouldn’t be easy, and assuming an indictment could be obtained, securing convictions would be even harder. The last line of defense for Kuehnle’s machine were key players in the criminal justice system who could be counted on to frustrate the process. Realizing that County Prosecutor Clarence Goldenberg was a pawn of the Commodore, Wilson asked the legislature to enact special legislation enabling the attorney general to go into any county and conduct an investigation, replacing the local prosecutor. The legislature gave the governor what he wanted, and Attorney General Edmund Wilson moved in to put together criminal charges. But there was one more obstacle, the county sheriff. The sheriff was now Smith Johnson’s son, Enoch. Sam Kirby had moved on to county clerk. Enoch Johnson had learned how to draw a grand jury from his father and there was no way any grand jury he chose would return an indictment against an Atlantic City politician.

The first presentation of evidence secured by the Macksey Committee was to a grand jury sitting before Judge Thomas Trenchard, a product of the Commodore’s machine. After hearing the evidence presented, the grand jury deliberated and found no basis for an indictment. Governor Wilson was incensed and made a move to replace both Sheriff Johnson and Judge Trenchard. Wilson used a vacancy in the court system to appoint Samuel Kalish, an independently wealthy and respected trial attorney from Mercer County. Upon arriving in Atlantic County, Judge Kalish ordered the sheriff to draw a grand jury and to present the members in court to be admonished prior to commencing their duties. When the jurors appeared, Attorney General Wilson noticed that one of them was Thomas Bowman, who had been named in the Macksey Committee report. Bowman was one of the defendants to be charged with election fraud. Judge Kalish dismissed Bowman and the entire grand jury.

Over Johnson’s protests Kalish utilized a little known statute to appoint a committee of “elisors” and empowered them to choose a grand jury of 23 men, comprised of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Prohibitionists. The Commodore was powerless to stop Attorney General Wilson. With Sheriff Johnson and his hand-picked grand jury out of the way, the criminal justice system proceeded.

The new grand jury returned indictments naming more than 120 defendants, many of whom held positions in city government or the Republican organization. There was Kuehnle, Sheriff Enoch Johnson, Mayor George Carmany, City Councilman Henry Holte, City Clerk Louis Donnelly, Building Inspector Al Gillison, Health Inspector Theodore Voelme, Atlantic City Electric President Lyman Byers, and on and on. These indictments all dealt with election fraud and it was naïve for Governor Wilson to expect an Atlantic County jury to return guilty verdicts against officials of the Republican Party. Nearly everyone was acquitted.

One of the defendants acquitted was Enoch Johnson. His trial helped launch him on his way to becoming Kuehnle’s successor. Represented by long-time friend and political attorney Emerson Richards, Johnson took the stand in his own defense and arrogantly defied Attorney General Wilson. He referred to the presiding judge by his first name and addressed the jurors directly, many of whom were supporters of the Republican machine. Neither Johnson nor anyone else of importance in Kuehnle’s organization was convicted of election fraud.

Simultaneous with the investigation into election fraud was an inquiry of official corruption in Atlantic City’s government. It was no secret that Kuehnle and his lieutenants had been personally benefiting from municipal contracts. The requirement of public employees to pay a portion of their salary to the Republican Party and kickbacks on city contracts were common knowledge.

In July 1911, newspaperman Harvey Thomas arranged a meeting between Attorney General Wilson and private detective William J. Burns. Long before criminal lawyers would debate the concept of entrapment, Burns hit upon an idea to smoke out Atlantic City’s elected officials, which the attorney general endorsed. Burns had one of his operatives, Frank Smiley, pose as “Mr. Franklin,” a successful New York City contractor. Mr. Franklin rented an elaborate suite of rooms at one of the fancy Boardwalk hotels and made a splash around town as a big spender. Mr. Franklin got the ear of the city councilmen and proposed to each of them that what the resort needed was a concrete Boardwalk. He persuaded five council members to adopt an ordinance appropriating $1,000,000 for the project and paid each of them $500 for their vote. The entire transaction with each council member was recorded by the newly invented dictograph. When confronted with the stenographic transcript of their conversations with Mr. Franklin, each of the councilmen confessed.