Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (27 page)

The war may not have been a good thing for the local racketeers, but it was great for the resort’s economy. Many hotels and boarding-houses throughout the resort were converted into barracks and offices. By 1943, the Army had moved into such places as the Traymore, Breakers, Brighton, Shelburne, and Dennis. For many servicemen, basic training in Atlantic City was a pleasant surprise. Their accommodations were far better than the average GI who trained in places like Fort Dix. Many of the soldiers enjoyed their stay so much they returned with their families after the war. For Boardwalk merchants, shopkeepers, barbers, bartenders, and restaurant owners, the Army and its seven-day per week visitors were a blessing. The Army’s presence helped many businesses survive the hard times that followed the repeal of Prohibition and the further loss of vacationers and conventioneers caused by the war. World War II was good to Atlantic City and times were very good for Hap Farley, who saw his power enhanced considerably.

In the election of 1943 Farley’s career received an unexpected boost. He was transformed from one of the more influential legislators to the dominant force in the New Jersey Senate. At the age of 70, after being away from Trenton for nearly 25 years, Walter Edge, Atlantic City’s most distinguished self-made man ever, made a political comeback and was elected governor. Following the term as governor engineered by Nucky Johnson, Edge went on to serve as U.S. Senator and Ambassador to France. From Hap Farley’s perspective, the timing of Edge’s return to politics could not have been better. As the political boss of the governor’s home county, Farley’s stock with the politicians in Trenton rose dramatically. With Walter Edge in the governor’s office, political leaders from the entire state, not just South Jersey, treated Farley with respect and sought his support. Hap exploited it for all it was worth. In Edge’s first year in office Farley was chosen majority leader; the following year he was elected senate president, becoming the undisputed leader of his party’s caucus. In terms of statewide power, Hap Farley never looked back.

Hap ruled the Republican Caucus in the state senate the same way a strong-willed coach runs his team. He called all the plays. At the time, the Republican Caucus
was
the senate, and in short order, Farley
was
the caucus. The GOP maintained sizable majorities, consistently controlling 13 to 17 of the 21 counties. The seven southern counties were nearly always represented by Republican senators; these were Farley’s votes. As leader of the caucus, Farley set the ground rules for how legislation was handled. He imposed a rule that no bill could be voted on in the full senate unless it had the support of at least 11 senators in the Republican Caucus. Once 11 votes were secured the other senators were expected to follow the rule of the majority and vote for the bill when it reached the senate floor. But 11 votes it had to be. Even if a majority of the Caucus, comprised of, say, seven to nine North Jersey senators, supported a particular bill, it would never see the light of day if Farley opposed it.

Farley’s dominance made the senate’s committee system meaningless. With Hap in control, the committees had no function except for political window-dressing. The only senate committee of any real importance was Judiciary, which passed upon nominations of the governor. Farley was either chairman of that committee or its dominant member during most of his career. For the next 25 years, Hap Farley was an insurmountable reality with whom every governor, regardless of party, had to contend. He could not be ignored. Farley controlled the senate so totally that it was political suicide to oppose him. “I can remember sitting in on more than one meeting between Hap and a governor. Hap’s agenda was always first.” The governors either dealt with Hap Farley or had their programs frustrated.

One bill that passed into law in 1945 demonstrates the power that Farley had attained after four years as senator. In September 1944 the Boardwalk was severely damaged by a hurricane. Whole portions of it had been washed away. It was wartime and Atlantic City’s government didn’t have the finances for the necessary repairs. Farley and Atlantic County Assemblyman Leon Leonard sponsored legislation to create the Municipal Improvement Tax or “Luxury Tax.” The Luxury Tax was special legislation designed to permit Atlantic City to levy a sales tax, something neither state government nor any other city in New Jersey had the power to do. The bill would permit a 5 percent tax on all retail sales, including food and drink in public restaurants, hotel rooms, and other services and entertainment. The idea was popular in the resort as the bulk of the revenue raised would come from tourists. It was estimated that the Luxury Tax would gross $500,000 to $800,000 per year and was to expire after a single summer season.

Securing the necessary votes in the senate was routine. Despite the opposition of a lone Republican Senator from Essex County, Farley had 15 votes, four more than required. The problem was in the assembly, where 31 votes were needed, and again the opposition came from the Republicans of Essex County. The Essex County Republicans had campaigned for election the previous year by running against new taxes of any kind. Without the four Republican votes from Essex County, there were only 28 Republican votes available. Farley tried every tactic he could think of, but the Essex County Assemblymen wouldn’t budge. Rather than see his bill go down to defeat, Farley turned to Nucky Johnson’s old ally, Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague.

Hudson County Democratic boss Frank Hague controlled four votes in the assembly, and Farley had something he wanted. There were two Republican bills aimed at Hague’s machine, both of which had the support of Governor Edge. One bill limited the jurisdiction of the Hudson County Traffic Court, reducing the authority of Hague’s handpicked magistrates. The other was designed to make the Hudson County Boulevard Commission a bipartisan agency—the commission was a major source of patronage. Hague wanted both bills killed, and only Farley could do that. Farley defied the governor and promised Hague the bills would never reach the floor of the senate. In exchange, Hague delivered his four votes and Farley got what he wanted. More than 50 years later the Luxury Tax is still in effect, generating millions of dollars in revenue.

With each re-election Farley’s presence loomed larger in the state house. In 10 years as senator he had become the most respected, and feared, powerbroker in New Jersey. To get anything done in Trenton, you had to see Hap. His power brought attention, and between 1946 and 1950 Farley was subjected to one investigation after another. His role as attorney for both the Atlantic City Race Track and a local contracting firm, Massett Construction Company, were scrutinized, as were the finances of Atlantic City’s government and the county Republican organization. In each instance Farley came away unscathed. Rather than tarnish his image, these investigations increased his stature.

One inquiry into Farley’s empire that attracted nationwide publicity was the U.S. Senate’s investigation into organized crime. In 1951 Estes Kefauver, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, was gearing up to run for President. As part of his campaign he had declared war on organized crime and the rackets. Using his position as chairman of a Senate Committee, Kefauver went from one city to another holding public hearings, exposing the local crime syndicates. During the preceding year there was a rebellion by several Atlantic City police officers, which attracted national attention and placed Farley and his organization high on Kefauver’s list.

In the summer of 1950 a group of police officers and firefighters organized themselves in an effort to secure a wage increase. The average police officer received an annual salary of less than $3,000; they were seeking a pay increase of $400 per year. The wage demands weren’t taken to Mayor Altman or the city commission but rather to Farley. City hall was filled with people handpicked by Farley. He was the puppeteer, and city government moved as he pulled the strings. When the city commission held its weekly caucus, Farley was always on hand for key decisions. No public contract, tax assessment, fire inspection, liquor license, or Boardwalk concession received approval if Hap said no. The leaders of this group knew they could never get a pay raise without his support.

Farley met with a delegation of employees and heard their requests. As usual he was cordial and assured them he’d “work something out.” The employees took this to mean they’d receive a raise. Several city commission meetings came and went with no action taken or any mention of their request. When approached a second time, Farley told the group’s leaders they’d have to be patient a while longer. Rather than wait, the group began a petition drive. Their game plan was to force a public question for their pay raise onto the ballot at the November election of 1950. Circulating their petition door-to-door, they gathered more than 16,000 signatures. With that type of public support, they believed Farley and the city commissioners would have no choice but to support them. They were wrong.

Farley went to a mass meeting of police officers and fire fighters and asked them to withdraw their request for the referendum. The leaders of the petition drive refused. Farley responded by having a loyalty oath circulated. The oath amounted to a counterpetition for police and fire fighters to renounce the referendum and to accept a future wage ordinance to be approved by the city commission. City employees who had signed the loyalty oath were expected to show their paper ballots (the election was pre-machine voting) to the poll workers. The intimidation worked. The referendum proceeded as scheduled and was soundly defeated. The question received the support of less than half the number of voters who had signed the petition, humiliating the group’s leaders.

Three of the movement’s spokesmen were policemen Jack Portock, Fred Warlich, and Francis Gribbin. They were bitter at their defeat and determined to get revenge. They retaliated by hitting Farley’s organization where it hurt.

After Nucky Johnson went to jail, and during World War II, the “slough” had been on more often than not. The slough was the term used to describe the closing of the gambling rooms because of outside pressure, first the federal investigators and then the U.S. Army, which stationed thousands of recruits in the resort’s hotels during World War II. By 1950 things had returned to normal. While Farley’s people were less brazen than Nucky Johnson, the rackets flourished under Hap. Protection money continued to be paid to the organization with Stumpy Orman tending to such matters, keeping Farley one step removed from handling payoffs.

Portock, Warlich, and Gribbin knew the card games, horse rooms, and numbers syndicate were able to exist because the police officer on the beat looked the other way. The rackets were something individual patrol officers had nothing to do with. If there were problems with an operator who didn’t have the okay from Stumpy Orman, or if someone failed to pay protection money, then either Lou Arnheim or Arch Witham of the vice squad would be sent out by Orman to apply pressure by either collecting the money or shutting them down.

Several weeks after defeat of the referendum, Portock and company tried to subdue the organization by attacking it head-on. As Tommy Taggart had done 10 years earlier, they began making arrests for violation of the state gambling laws. Atlantic City’s racketeers were stupefied. No one could believe what was happening. Farley responded cautiously. Each of the patrol officers were summoned first to their ward leaders and then to Orman and Jimmy Boyd. According to a ward leader at the time, Portock and the others were told they were “creating a lot of bad publicity for Atlantic City” and were ordered to stop the raids. “What are you doing this for? It won’t do you any good, and you know you can’t fight the organization. Keep it up and you’ll be out of a job.”

In winter 1951 one of Farley’s lieutenants, Richard Jackson, assistant to the commissioner of public safety, arranged a meeting between Farley and the rebel police officers in an attempt to make peace. At the last moment, Jimmy Boyd killed the meeting. Boyd viewed the police officers’ willingness to meet as a sign of weakness and advised Farley he could wipe them out. Nevertheless, the arrests continued and Portock and his cohorts became celebrities, of sorts. Between November 1950 and May 1951 Portock and company wreaked havoc on the rackets. Their raids spared no one and enraged Orman, Boyd, and Farley. They were dubbed by the national media as the “Four Horsemen,” portrayed as heroes crusading against crime and political corruption. (There never really was a fourth “horseman” per se; William Shepperson and others occasionally accompanied Portock, Warlich, and Gribbin.) When Farley refused to compromise on the wage increase they found they had backed themselves into a corner. The Four Horsemen had no choice but to continue the raids. The best they could hope for was to embarrass Farley.

But the organization had the last say. The Four Horsemen were given remote duty assignments, at odd hours, patrolling on foot areas of the city where police officers didn’t usually patrol. They were assigned deserted potions of the Boardwalk during the winter months and to guard the public water mains coming from the mainland reservoir on the outskirts of town. A special traffic squad was created and Portock and friends were ordered to remain in the middle of the street prohibited from moving farther than 20 feet from their post. The traffic squad’s hours were from 10:30
A.M
. to 6:30
P.M.
, the hours during which numbers runners and bookies collected and paid off. The rebels persisted by making raids on their own time and found themselves suspended without pay for five days at a time, the maximum then permitted under Civil Service without a hearing. Eventually each of the Four Horsemen was brought up on charges for misconduct and fired from their positions.

Before they were crushed, the Four Horsemen had their day in the sun as witnesses before the Kefauver Committee. Portock and his supporters appeared before the committee and named the key politicians and racketeers who profited from gambling. They produced a card index file listing more than 300 racketeers. They told how the numbers barons parlayed the nickels and dimes of local residents and tourists into yearly incomes of $150,000. Their testimony detailed the corrupt workings of the police department. Chief of Police Harry Saunders was at best a figurehead and the city commissioner in charge of the public safety department, William Cuthbert, was exposed as a senile old man. Testimony revealed that Cuthbert was routinely driven around town in his city car by a fireman, delivering eggs from a farm he owned on the mainland. The police department was really run by Stumpy Orman and Jimmy Boyd. Orman, the city’s leading racketeer, made sure everybody paid up. Boyd was the political enforcer who kept everyone in line. Kefauver’s Committee report concluded that it was “inescapable that Stumpy Orman has controlled the Atlantic City Police Department in the interest of the underworld gambling fraternity.”