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

The other area scrutinized was the Commodore’s personal business interests. In addition to the Atlantic City Brewery, Kuehnle was a shareholder in the United Paving Company. It was one of many firms Kuehnle had formed over the years to obtain government contracts. United Paving was successful from its inception and in a short time had contracts totaling $600,000. It was successful on every municipal project it competed for. There might have been lower bidders, but they were never able to comply with the bid specifications, so United Paving got the jobs.

In 1909, the city council let out for bid a contract to install new timber water mains from the mainland to Absecon Island. It was known as the Woodstave Project. Then, as now, Atlantic City received its drinking water from artesian wells on the mainland seven miles over the meadows. For years, the water had been pumped into the city in small pipes. To accommodate Atlantic City’s growth, it was necessary to install one large water main. United Paving hadn’t bid on the project because Kuehnle was a member of the Water Commission and there was an obvious conflict of interest. Instead, a dummy bidder, Frank S. Lockwood, a clerk in United Paving, was awarded the contract at a bid price of $224,000. On the same day the bid was awarded Lockwood assigned his contract rights to a firm called Cherry and Lockwood, Cherry being William I. Cherry, the Commodore’s partner in United Paving. The Woodstave Project only partially involved paving, but Kuehnle and Cherry wanted the entire contract. Their greed caused the contract price to increase beyond $300,000 with all of the extras being approved by Kuehnle as chairman of the Water Commission. The commission’s records showed that of the 15 vouchers submitted for payment, 12 had been personally approved by Kuehnle.

This was all Attorney General Wilson needed. The jury had no choice but to return a guilty verdict. The Commodore’s conviction and the success at exposing the widespread corruption in the resort made a valuable trophy for Woodrow Wilson on his march to the White House.

The Commodore appealed his conviction and by the time the final ruling came down upholding the verdict, Woodrow Wilson had gone on to become president. Kuehnle was sentenced to a year of hard labor and $1,000 fine. His sentence began in December 1913 and before going to jail, he made arrangements for Christmas gifts of food and clothing to be given to Atlantic City’s poor. Surrogate Emmanual Shaner and Louis Donnelly saw to it that several thousand gifts were given out in the Northside.

The Commodore served his time without complaint. Upon his release from jail, he went to Bermuda for a lengthy vacation and then for an extended visit to Germany, his parents’ homeland. Nearly a year later he returned to the resort tanned and rested, to a warm but quiet reception from his many friends. He soon learned things had changed during his absence. A new leader, Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, had emerged as the boss of Atlantic City’s Republican Party. The Commodore had known Nucky as Smith Johnson’s son, and after the elder Johnson’s death, the two became close. Kuehnle confided in him as he had his father. Nucky was seen by many as the Commodore’s protégé and with his acquittal at the election fraud trial, he was the heir apparent when Kuehnle went off to jail.

After the Commodore’s return, he and Nucky had several skirmishes, but there was no doubt about who was in control. Finally, they reached an accommodation with Johnson agreeing to support the Commodore for city commissioner. Kuehnle was elected in 1920 and re-elected each time his four-year term ended, until his death in 1934. A tribute to his popularity was the naming of a local street in his honor. Kuehnle had the undying affection of the public, but Nucky Johnson had the power, and he used it in a way that made the Commodore look like a choirboy.

5

The Golden Age of Nucky

Joe Hamilton was the back-up driver. Louie Kessel didn’t leave town often but when he did, Joe was first choice to drive the boss around. This night the stops were a baseball game, a wake, and a Fourth Ward Republican Club meeting, followed by dinner at Babette’s.

A few innings of the ball game was enough and he was ready to leave. When Joe returned with the limousine there was a young woman with the boss. Joe got out to open the door and was told to drive out of town to Absecon before heading to the wake. The rest is better told by Hamilton. “There I am driving along talking to Mr. Johnson with a pretty little tart seated next to him. The next thing I knew she’s got her head in his lap and Mr. Johnson’s grinnin’ from ear to ear.” The boss never missed a chance to mix pleasure with business.

For nearly 30 years, Enoch “Nucky” Johnson lived the life of a decadent monarch, with the power to satisfy his every want. Tall (6 feet 4 inches), trim, and broad-shouldered, Nucky Johnson was a ruggedly handsome man with large, powerful hands, a glistening bald head, a devilish grin, friendly gray eyes, and a booming voice. In his prime, he strode the Boardwalk in evening clothes complete with spats, patent leather shoes, a walking stick, and a red carnation in his lapel. Nucky rode around town in a chauffeur-driven, powder blue Rolls Royce limousine, maintained several residences, hosted lavish parties for hundreds of guests, used the local police as his private gendarmes, had a retinue of servants to satisfy his every want, and an untaxed income of more than $500,000 per year. His antics were reported widely and at the height of his reign he was a national phenomenon, hailed as “the Czar of the Ritz.” Despite his notoriety, Johnson was a product of Atlantic City who couldn’t have flourished anywhere else.

Enoch Lewis Johnson was born on January 20, 1883, in Smithville, a small bayside farming village several miles north of Atlantic City. The son of Kuehnle ally Sheriff Smith Johnson, Nucky spent his childhood moving between Atlantic City and Mays Landing according to his father’s rotation as sheriff. During the years as sheriff, Johnson and his family lived in the sheriff’s residence next to the county jail. The years as undersheriff, the Johnsons lived in a rambling frame home in the resort so the sheriff and his wife could enjoy the social life of a booming vacation center.

Nucky’s parents, Smith and Virginia Johnson, had used politics to escape the backbreaking work of farming. Election to sheriff was the ticket to an easy life and status in the growing resort. Smith Johnson was a broad-chested bear of a man with a thick black mustache. Standing six-foot-two, weighing 250 pounds, and having paws for hands, he had the strength to lift a wagon. “No one ever gave Sheriff Johnson a hard time.” Virginia was a tall, slender, beautiful woman with long, auburn hair, and hands with fingers meant to play the piano. She was always exquisitely dressed and was “the kind of woman that comes to mind when you think of an elegant Victorian lady.” Virginia was every bit the politician in her own right. “She was big on charity, organizing fundraisers and whatnot, for the poor people, but she always made sure they knew the help came from the Republican Party.”

Through his parents, Nucky was immersed in politics long before he was old enough to vote. As a child and a young man, Nucky watched his father make a plaything of government. The law forbidding the re-election of a sheriff was supposed to prevent an individual from accumulating too much power. But the cozy relationship between Smith Johnson and Sam Kirby made a mockery of the reelection ban contained in the state constitution. The sheriff’s employees were handpicked solely on the basis of patronage and the fees his office collected were reviewed by no one. Smith Johnson’s tactics and the success he attained taught his son early on that government and the electoral process were no more than a game to be mastered for personal power. Nucky also learned that in Atlantic City, a politician would only have power so long as he was prepared to bend the law when needed to help the resort’s economy. Smith Johnson and Louis Kuehnle were close friends and the sheriff’s favorite hangout was “the Commodore’s” hotel. There were many evenings when, while still a boy, Nucky sat quietly next to his father at the Corner and listened to the stories and strategies of Kuehnle and his cohorts. Kuehnle’s hotel was the hub of Republican politics in Atlantic City and the place where important political decisions were made. Nucky may not have understood all he heard, but he was there, and while still in his teens began to learn the rules of the game. By age 19, Johnson made his first political speech, and as soon as he was old enough to vote at age 21, his father appointed him undersheriff. He completed high school, attended a year at a teacher’s college, and put in a stint at reading law in the office of a local attorney, but it was politics he wanted.