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

Joe Altman was a clever and experienced politician. “He was as smooth a glad-hander as ever lived” and was popular among the party leaders and the general public. But, Altman wasn’t ambitious. He was quite comfortable following Nucky’s lead. While the support may have been there, he wasn’t about to try to become boss himself. That would have been too much work. Joe Altman preferred playing cards every afternoon at the Lion’s Club. Farley could see what Altman wanted was a safe job with prestige. Mayor was what he wanted, provided someone else was the boss. Farley assured Altman he would back him for mayor once Taggart was out of the way. Altman became mayor in 1944 and remained there, following Farley’s lead all the while, for the next 25 years.

Another player, without whose support Farley couldn’t have risen to power, was James Boyd, clerk of the board of freeholders. Boyd was Nucky Johnson’s political right arm and leader of the powerful Fourth Ward. Boyd recognized that of the contenders for Nucky’s title, Farley was the only one with whom he could continue to exercise the same control over the organization he had under Nucky. Boyd had no choice but to back Farley. Finally, as for Johnson’s support, there were no deals Farley could make. Nucky was preoccupied with trying to keep out of jail, and as he countered the moves of the FBI, his presence faded. Farley had nothing to offer Johnson except a sympathetic ear and quiet support for a job in city government for Nucky’s new bride, Flossie. The trick was to remain loyal but still keep his distance.

As the key players in the Republican machine were lining up behind Farley, Taggart set upon the course that led to his ruin. In addition to being elected mayor, Taggart insisted on being named the director of public safety, giving him direct control over the police department. Taggart believed he could use this power to bludgeon the local vice industry into line. He began sporting pearl-handled six shooters on this hips and was tagged by the local media, “Two Gun Tommy.” In the summer 1940, while Johnson was awaiting trial, Taggart began making raids on various gambling rooms throughout town. He had a police radio installed in his car and personally took charge of the raids.

Through his raids on the gambling rooms Two Gun Tommy was sending out the message he was now the boss, and that the racketeers had to deal with him or he’d shut them down. Taggart’s raids attracted sensational coverage in both the local and national media. Never before had an Atlantic City politician declared war on the rackets. When the vice industry refused to support him, he increased the raids and cast himself as a crusader cleaning up the town. Tommy Taggart, “the solid organization man” who as police recorder had bent the law to advance his political career, was now a reformer.

It may have made good headlines in out-of-town newspapers, but politically, Taggart’s actions were a disaster. Two Gun Tommy’s power grab failed. Farley’s supporters got the word out that in addition to being a grandstanding troublemaker, Taggart was a homosexual. His position was severely damaged and by April 1941 the Republican ward leaders formed a “War Board,” making plans to have Taggart removed from office. That May, only one year after Taggart had been sworn into office, the precinct captains were gathering signatures to have Two Gun Tommy removed at a recall election.

There never was a recall election. Instead Frank Farley engineered a coup, which eliminated any chance of the voters doing something unpredictable. At Farley’s prompting, the city commissioners adopted two “Ripper Resolutions” that made Taggart a figurehead. While Taggart was out of town, the other four commissioners stripped him of the Mayor’s supervision of the police department, municipal court, the building department, and public relations office. Taggart was mayor in name only. The four commissioners issued a joint statement claiming, “We have restrained every effort” to aid the mayor, they said, but “he has been unable to properly discharge the duties of his departments.” This was their only public statement. Farley instructed everyone to duck any questions from the media. Farley and his allies followed the political adage of Calvin Coolidge, “I’ve never had to explain something I didn’t say.”

Taggart knew who had masterminded the coup, but there was nothing he could do. By May 1942, with Nucky in jail, everyone of any importance had closed ranks behind Farley. Taggart sued his fellow commissioners to regain his powers and lost, being replaced as mayor by Joe Altman in 1944. Later Taggart attacked Farley and harassed him by every means he could, but it was no use. Consumed and frustrated to the end, Tommy Taggart died, most say from nervous exhaustion, in September 1950. He was crushed by a system he only partly understood.

A telling footnote to the transition from Nucky to Frank Farley is Farley’s service as legal counsel to one George Goodman. While Taggart was leading his gambling raids and grabbing headlines, Farley was quietly using his talents as a lawyer to assist the local vice industry.

George Goodman was the operator of the horse race information service for the Atlantic City gambling rooms. He had a private wire to his place of business, originating there and going to 23 other places in Atlantic City. In 1940 New Jersey Bell notified Goodman it intended to cut off his telephone service. The telephone company worried it might be prosecuted for giving service to an illegal enterprise. Farley interceded on behalf of Goodman and met with Frankland Briggs, Bell’s general counsel. Briggs later testified in a legal proceeding that “He [Farley] told me Goodman frankly admitted he was in the scratch sheet business but that he [Goodman] was neither a bookmaker or gambler but was merely conducting an information service. Mr. Farley argued that his client could legally furnish such information and was no more liable to arrest than newspapers or radios which dispensed racing news.” Farley won several extensions of Goodman’s service, but the telephone company prevailed in the end. By representing Goodman Farley gained the respect of Atlantic City’s gangsters, which was essential to becoming boss. While he valued the racketeers’ support, it was the respect of the state’s political leaders that Farley wanted most.

His several years as an assemblyman had made a lasting impression and with his election to the state senate in 1940, Hap Farley was where he wanted to be. The overwhelming majorities delivered by Atlantic County in Republican primaries guaranteed Nucky’s successor a prominent position in Republican politics statewide. Farley’s dual role as boss and senator brought him into regular contact with the leaders of both parties. At the time, South Jersey was overwhelmingly Republican and Atlantic County was the leading Republican county. It wasn’t long before Hap was the acknowledged spokesman for the seven senators from South Jersey.

Farley loved being State Senator and worked tirelessly to become an effective legislator. He studied his 20 colleagues and always knew what issues were important to them. His relationship with his fellow senators was marked by “unfailing courtesy, personal warmth, and complete integrity to every commitment made.” As Senator Wayne Dumont, a colleague of 20 years, recalled, “He never made a commitment lightly, but you could always rely upon his word—it was totally good. I knew if I got a commitment out of him I never had to worry because he would keep it.” And he expected everyone else to do likewise. “Once you reneged on a deal with Hap Farley, that was it. He had nothing more to do with you.”

Frank Farley had a gift for the legislative process: He never forgot the terms of any alliance, he avoided conflicting obligations with remarkable finesse, and always knew where he had to be on a piece of legislation at any given time. “He would remember if he shook your hand and said to you that he was going to do something. You could count on it. Hap remembered every horse he ever traded, nothing got by him.” He had a parochial view of the legislative process—Atlantic City and County were his only interests. Provided it wasn’t harmful to Atlantic County, Farley would support any legislation devised to help another senator’s county. He never became involved in statewide issues per se, except for the impact on Atlantic County; then he was out front taking control of the situation. If Hap couldn’t help a colleague on legislation important to him, he’d never hurt him, letting someone else deliver the blow.