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

In 1964 the painful reality of this sad state of affairs was broadcast to the entire nation. In the summer of that year the Democratic National Convention came to Atlantic City. It was a catastrophe for the resort. The 15,000 delegates, newsmen, and technicians found a town unable to meet their needs. Hotel services broke down under the demands of the Convention. “By mid-morning switchboards would collapse and the flustered operators refused to take messages for political guests whose message mating and communication are of the essence; promised television sets did not work, and promised air conditioning proved nonexistent.”

To make matters worse, local hotels and restaurants jacked up their prices during Convention week. Out-of-town politicians and media people had never been favorites of Atlantic City. Resort businesspeople viewed Convention week as a chance to grab a few extra dollars from people they would never see again. Their greed had its price—most of the delegates were outraged at having been exploited. The news media transmitted the delegates’ tales of contempt for the resort to the entire nation. “Never had a town and a Chamber of Commerce made a greater effort only to end by exposing themselves to ridicule.”

Following the campaign, Presidential historian Theodore White summed up the resort’s plight:Of Atlantic City it may be written: Better it shouldn’t have happened … time has overtaken it, and it has become one of those sad gray places of entertainment which one can find across America, from Coney Island in New York to Knott’s Berry Farm in California, where the poor and the lower middle class grasp so hungrily for the first taste of pleasure that the affluent society begins to offer them—and find shoddy instead. Frequented now by old people on budget, by teenagers who come for a sporting weekend, by families of limited means trying to squeeze into cramped motel rooms, it is rundown and glamourless.

The resort was used to negative publicity, but this was different. After the Democratic Convention the criticism became derisive. The major magazines and newspapers ridiculed Atlantic City whenever the chance presented itself. Whether it was a snafu at the Miss America Pageant, a weekend visitor who had been ripped off at a Boardwalk auction, or a disgruntled Elk, Moose, Tall Cedar, or businessperson in town for a convention, it found its way onto the wire services. Typically, such stories would contain negative background information for the main embarrassing event and made a mockery of the resort.

A common theme found in these articles was the pseudoanalysis that Atlantic City’s problems were of its own making. The resort itself was to blame for its decline. In one way or another, which was never quite explained, the town had stopped doing something that had made it a national success. What these critics failed to comprehend was Atlantic City hadn’t fallen; it was abandoned. Time had left the resort behind.

Although his town was caught in a downward spiral, Hap Farley’s political power appeared invincible. Following the heated city commission race of ’52, the next election in ’56 produced token opposition of three independent candidates against the organization slate of five incumbents. Farley’s people won handily. By 1960 the opposition had been so thoroughly subdued that there was no contest. Not a single person filed as a candidate to run against Farley’s slate.

The understanding between the Republican organization and local Democrats, forged by Nucky Johnson and Charlie Lafferty, continued under Farley. In time, Lafferty was replaced by William Casey and Arthur Ponzio. These “Democrats” were unabashedly Farley supporters. Each time there was a city commission election, the organization ticket consisted of three Republicans and two “Farleycrats.” This arrangement also carried over into county elections, insuring Hap never had more than token opposition. And with each re-election, Farley’s power in Trenton grew stronger, making him master of the State Capitol.

After more than 20 years as leader of the majority party of the senate, Hap Farley had succeeded in making alliances that transcended partisan politics and any one person’s term in office, giving him complete control over the legislative process. As the most powerful person in Trenton, he had a veto over any program sought by the executive branch and rarely had difficulty obtaining the governor’s support. When he did, he simply waited until the right issue came along and put up a roadblock until he got what he wanted. The key was in knowing how to pick his fights. There was no one in Trenton to challenge the senator from Atlantic County. To become governor would have meant a loss of power. But there were forces at work that in time scaled him down to size.

One of the keys to Hap Farley’s power in the state house was the composition of the senate. Regardless of population, each of New Jersey’s 21 counties was represented by a single senator. It was a situation that had prevailed since the original State Constitution of 1776. During his years in the senate, Farley was able to count the votes of his six fellow senators from South Jersey as his own. He never needed more than four votes of the remaining 14 to control the senate. Consistent Republican majorities and his dominance of the GOP caucus ensured Farley’s mastery of the senate.

The decade of the ’50s saw enormous growth in New Jersey’s metropolitan areas. The 1960 census produced numbers that aroused the politicians from the urban counties. The population figures revealed glaring disparities. A study prepared by Rutgers University presented the following conclusions: The senators from the 11 smallest counties, who constituted a majority of the State Senate, represented only 19 percent of the state’s total population; Essex County, with the state’s largest city, Newark, was 219.7 percent underrepresented in terms of relative population; Cape May County was 83 percent overrepresented using the same standard. With a population of approximately 160,000, Atlantic County was 44 percent overrepre-sented. These numbers were typical of many state legislative districts throughout the United States, and they added up to trouble for the status quo.

In 1962 the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Baker v. Carr established the principal of “one person, one vote,” ordering federal and state voting districts to be of equal size. The Baker decision had an almost immediate impact. Never before had there been such a flurry of political action in response to a Court’s decision. Within hours of the ruling, lawsuits were filed in both state and federal courts challenging the existing schemes of legislative representation. One of the lawsuits spawned by the Baker decision was brought by Christopher Jackman, a union leader and Democratic political activist from Hudson County, who later became speaker of the New Jersey Assembly. Jackman was seeking to force the state legislature to reapportion its districts based upon population. The State Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the districts of both the senate and assembly must be based upon population.

One of the Justices was Farley’s old ally, Vincent Haneman, whom Farley had recommended for appointment to the Supreme Court. Haneman voted with the Court but didn’t join in its opinion, choosing to write one of his own. His opinion begins, “There comes a time in the career of practically every judge when he must embrace a theory of law to which he does not personally subscribe.” Haneman continued, tracing New Jersey history from pre-Revolution days when the colony was divided into East and West Jersey. He explained that New Jersey had always had an upper and lower house in its legislature. Representation in the senate had been “based upon territory as distinguished from population” throughout state history. Each time the State Constitution was revised, this practice was preserved. Haneman saw no reason it shouldn’t continue but knew he had to yield to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Haneman’s opinion reads like an apology to an old friend.