Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

by Nelson Johnson

  In calling for Farley to step aside, the Linwood faction shattered the public image of unity that Farley had so carefully maintained. Hap was only able to hold the pieces together by consenting to the creation of a countywide executive committee. The committee would have input on the selection of candidates and setting party policy. Sharing power was a major concession for Farley, but it wasn’t enough.

  While Hap Farley was doing everything he could to keep the lid on his troubles, the county Democrats were finally putting together an organization. The Leo Clark campaign in ’65 and the several following elections saw the Democrats begin to make inroads on the local level by electing candidates in several mainland communities. Nevertheless, the growth of an independent Democratic organization was pathetically slow. The Republican Party had held every governmental position in its grip since the beginning of the 20th century. The only persons who would ally themselves with an independent Democratic organization were idealists opposed to boss rule, Democrats who had moved into Atlantic County from out of the area, or disgruntled Republicans who had been rejected by the party power structure. No practical person who might ever want something from city or county government would register as a Democrat. One of the disgruntled Republicans upon whom the Democratic organization was built was resort attorney Patrick McGahn. His rites of passage into the Democratic Party illustrate how stifling Farley’s power had become.

  Patrick McGahn was born in Atlantic City in 1928. His father was a native of Ireland and was the owner of “Paddy McGahn’s,” a local bar at Iowa and Atlantic avenues. Hap Farley was the McGahn family’s attorney, and both of Pat’s parents were strong supporters of the senator. Paddy McGahn was active in the Fourth Ward Republican Club and at the time of his death in 1949, his honorary pallbearers included Nucky Johnson, Hap Farley, Jimmie Boyd, and Mayor Joseph Altman. After graduating from college and starting his first year of law school, Pat McGahn was called up by his Marine Reserve Unit to fight in the Korean War. He served with distinction and was a decorated war hero. Upon returning to the resort in 1953, McGahn gave thought to getting involved in local politics prior to returning to law school. He had grown up under ward politics and the boss rule of Johnson and Farley. He understood the scheme of things and was prepared to become a foot soldier in Farley’s organization in hopes of rising through the ranks. At the urging of his mother, McGahn sought a meeting with the senator to get Farley’s advice on how he should go about becoming active in the party.

  Hap Farley was “very pleasant” to McGahn but advised him that “there were too many ahead of me and that it would be wise if I went to law school and then seek another area out of Atlantic County to start my career.” McGahn found Farley “very gracious” as he closed the door on future involvement. “He had to take care of the people that were already involved. There was no room in the inn.” Farley rejected McGahn without even knowing what he had to offer. Thus did Pat McGahn become a Democrat; there were many more frustrated Republicans who found their way to the Democratic Party in a similar fashion.

  The frustration felt by Atlantic City’s residents as their town deteriorated with no end in sight came to a head in 1971. The beneficiary of this emotional tidal wave was Joseph McGahn, Pat’s older brother. Dr. Joseph L. McGahn was the ideal candidate to oppose Farley. An Irish-Catholic, born and raised in Atlantic City, McGahn attended Our Lady Star of the Sea School and Holy Spirit High School. He was valedictorian of his college class and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Before entering politics, McGahn had played a positive and highly visible role in the greater Atlantic City community. He had been a Little League Commissioner for more than 10 years, and as an obstetrician/gynecologist, McGahn and his partner had delivered more than 12,000 babies. Intelligent, articulate, witty, and personable to all his patients, his following included thousands of entire families. It was an excellent base for an aspiring politician.

  Joe McGahn’s first run for political office was for Absecon City Council in 1966. He was elected the lone Democrat on a seven-member council. Two years later he ran for mayor and scored a startling victory, winning by a margin of two to one in a city with almost no registered Democrats. It was a phenomenal accomplishment and made “Doc Joe” a leader among the independent Democrats. With Joe serving as the spokesman and Pat as strategist, the McGahn brothers devoted their time and spent their money building up the County Democratic organization, all the while aiming toward the ’71 Senate race. After the 1970 election, there finally was a legitimate second party with the Democrats having four mayors and 25 councilmen holding office throughout Atlantic County. While a far cry from the cohesive unit that the Republicans had assembled over the years, it was all the McGahns needed as a base for their battle with Farley.

  The McGahn brothers took their battle right into Farley’s backyard. They knew their campaign needed much more than the support of Democrats and Independents. The edge in registered voters was so huge that to be successful, Joe McGahn needed the votes of a large percentage of rank-and-file Republicans. Building on relationships they had made over the years, Pat and Joe McGahn reached into the Republican organization and whittled away at Farley’s core of strength. The natural place to begin was on the mainland.

  The Shore Road Republicans had little difficulty supporting Joe McGahn. In many ways he was one of them. He had re-established his home on the mainland to escape Atlantic City’s urban rot. Like them, he saw no future in a city or political organization dominated by an aging autocrat whose practices were better suited for the old style ward politics of 30 years earlier. These mainlanders wanted a change even if it meant voting for a Democrat. Any reluctance they might have had in supporting McGahn was eliminated by Farley’s refusal to step aside. They had given him his chance. He could have bowed out gracefully and maybe even chosen his successor. It’s likely someone such as County Freeholder Director Howard “Fritz” Haneman, son of Hap’s crony, Vincent Haneman, would have been acceptable to Farley’s critics. But Farley wouldn’t consider passing the reins and that left the Shore Road Republicans with no choice. In their view, Farley had to go.

  With Shore Road Republicans on board, the McGahns turned to Atlantic City. That front was handled deftly by brother Pat. Both the McGahns were born and raised in the Fourth Ward and had strong ties there, but it was Pat who was his father’s son, the bartender who could read his customers in a single glance. As a politician, Pat had much in common with Nucky Johnson. Streetwise and tough nosed, Pat McGahn understood what it took to survive in Atlantic City politics. Like Nucky, Pat was as nasty as an alley cat to his enemies, and generous and loyal to his friends.

  There was almost no one in Atlantic City who didn’t know Pat McGahn and that he was the force behind his brother’s campaign. Their association was comparable to the division of responsibilities that existed between Hap Farley and Jimmy Boyd; Joe was the candidate and good guy; Pat was the tactician and enforcer. As was true with Boyd and Farley, Pat didn’t have to confer with Joe before making a commitment. Meeting individually with dozens of precinct workers and ward heelers, Pat exploited the discontent of Atlantic City Republican Party regulars and persuaded them to support the Democratic slate.

  He knew that many of them had counseled Farley against seeking re-election, and they saw his defeat as inevitable. Pat McGahn wooed them on terms they understood; this was a watershed election, there was going to be a major transfer of power, and they could be part of the new regime. In short, the train was leaving the station and this was their chance to get on board. His appeal was effective. While there were few publicly announced defections, there were many ward workers who quietly urged their neighbors to dump Farley.

  And dump him they did. It was a humiliating defeat. Farley was beaten almost three to two, losing by a margin of nearly 12,000 votes. The entire ticket went down in 18 of 23 municipalities in Atlantic County. Hap lost Atlantic City by more than 2,000 votes. In Jimmy Boyd’s vaunted Fourth Ward, where Far
ley had consistently received pluralities by as much as 5,000 votes, the McGahns fought him to a standoff, with Hap edging Joe McGahn by less than 200 votes. For the first time in his life, Hap Farley had been whipped. It was something beyond his experience and left him numb with disappointment. Despite the hurt, Farley conceded defeat graciously. There were no harsh words nor recriminations. He congratulated Joe McGahn and wished him well. Through it all he remained a gentleman.

  If Hap Farley had any regrets about the ’71 campaign, he never expressed them. Had he stepped down voluntarily, he could have been the resort’s distinguished elder statesman; instead, after his defeat—with the exception of a critical election in 1976—he was shoved aside like a worthless relic. There were still those who sought his counsel, but they were few in number and it was always privately. The stigma of his rejection by the voters ostracized him from the political mainstream; however, Farley didn’t permit bitterness to consume him and he accepted his fate. For the next several years, until his death to cancer in 1977, Farley was a booster for his city whenever he had the chance.

  Of the three bosses who reigned over the corruption of Atlantic City, it was Francis Sherman Farley who ruled with the most knowledge of government and restraint on unlawful excesses. Hap Farley was a giant. In the history of New Jersey politics, he is in a league of his own.

  9

  Turn Out the Lights

  The windows hadn’t been washed in months. The seats were grimy and the entire place had a damp stench about it. The marquee was dark and blank, save for the words “Coming Soon.” Only Skinny D’Amato, owner of the 500 Club, could recall the last name act to appear in his nightclub.

  Paul “Skinny” D’Amato was a local hero. A grade school dropout, running numbers at age 11, he had his own gambling room by the time he was 16. A successful racketeer since the Nucky Johnson era, D’Amato was held in esteem by the entire community. Skinny seemed to know everyone, from the guy slicing lunchmeat at the corner grocery to entertainers in Hollywood. Handsome, dapper, and charming in a way expected of a nightclub owner, D’Amato was a nocturnal creature. A coffee-drinking chain smoker, Skinny hardly ever awoke before noon and routinely had breakfast in bed. The 500 Club was his life’s work, offering all kinds of entertainment, from singers and comedians to women and boys. In its prime, the acts at the 500 Club rivaled the best in Vegas and the Big Apple. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis got their start there, and Frank Sinatra was a frequent performer. But the 500 Club was no longer a nightclub; it was a seedy bar, attracting a handful of old regulars and a trickle of first-timers lured by its reputation. D’Amato was having trouble meeting payroll and taxes, remaining open for lack of anything better to do. The same was true of most of his customers, especially the female patrons.

  Rita was the only woman sitting at the bar. Platinum blonde hair and rings on every finger but her thumbs, she wasn’t easy to mistake. Her new jeans were so tight they looked as if she had been poured into them. Her sweater was a gaudy green and despite the money she’d spent on her bra, her breasts sagged unmercifully. The years hadn’t been kind and no amount of Maybelline helped. It was a young crowd, most of whom came to the 500 Club out of curiosity, hoping to find the hot times they’d heard about from their fathers. A few of them looked her over, but Rita wasn’t their idea of action. Within a couple of hours the bar was empty, but for the regulars, leaving Rita with no choice but Pacific Avenue in search of a score.

  By 1974 Atlantic City was one with Rita—a broken-down old whore scratching for customers. What once was a prosperous and bustling seaside resort was now a sleazy saltwater ghetto struggling to get by on a hollow reputation. No one who knew better, or who could afford to go elsewhere, would choose Atlantic City as a place to vacation.

  Jonathan Pitney’s dream had become a nightmare, and his town was collapsing. The core area, once the bustling center of the hotel industry, was a squalid, decaying embarrassment. In the off-season, the town was dead. There were days between September and June when a bowling ball could have rolled from one end of Atlantic Avenue to the other without hitting anything. The profile of the streets leading to the beach resembled a garbage pile. Beginning with the battered, towering hotels along the Boardwalk, and sloping to the grungy motels of the beach block, the streets continued across Pacific Avenue lined with abandoned churches, rundown boarding-houses, discount liquor stores, and greasy-thumb eateries that closed by dark. Across Atlantic Avenue and onto Baltic and Mediterranean, the buildings blurred into a huge pile of rubble making up a vast ghetto. Most of the residential neighborhoods looked like Dresden after World War II. But there had been no bombs, just decay. Street after street, there were thousands of row houses needing painting and repairs, some occupied—the occasional home to vagrants—most vacant, punctuated by burned out ones.

  The spirit of the community was burned out, too. As the middle class made its exodus, the town’s social fabric unraveled. Schools and churches closed or were forced to consolidate. Service clubs disbanded as their members relocated to the mainland, sapping the city of civic leaders. Little League baseball, teenage basketball, and youth clubs saw their numbers dwindle until many dissolved. The city was rife with street crime. Corner grocers and family-owned clothing, jewelry, and hardware stores packed it in as robberies gobbled up their profits. Barbers and beauticians retired and no one took over their shops, leaving “Sale or Lease” signs all over town. Movie theatres closed for lack of customers and vandalism, and every office building in town had space for rent. With no prospect of a turnaround, despair was the dominant mood.

  For nearly a generation Atlantic City’s leaders were helpless in dealing with the deterioration. Between 1950 and ‘74, tourist income shrank from more than $70 million annually to less than $40 million; thousands of hotel rooms were torn down or boarded up, reducing the rooms for visitors from nearly 200,000 to less than 100,000, hardly any of which could be considered modern. “How could you get anyone to stay in a hotel where the mattresses were 40 years old and guests had to share a bathroom?”

  As the grand hotels were pulled down, they left gaps along the Boardwalk as startling as missing teeth in a smile. Instead of a grand promenade and showcase for popular culture and industry, the Boardwalk was home to schlock houses, gyp joints, and panhandlers. The unemployment rate was about 25 percent for nine months of the year, with a full one-third of the population on welfare. More than 90 percent of the housing stock had been built prior to 1939, with the majority substandard. Of the nine New Jersey cities included in the Federal Model Cities Program, Atlantic City had the highest percentage of families (33.5 percent) earning less than $3,000 per year. A report prepared by a local antipoverty group disclosed that the resort had the highest divorce, venereal disease, tuberculosis, and infant mortality rates of any city in the state. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, among 528 American cities in the 25,000 to 50,000 population group, Atlantic City had the highest total number of crimes in the seven standard categories. The criminals were poor people stealing from the less poor. No new money of any kind was coming to town. There had been no major construction for nearly a generation. The only activity on the rise was arson.

  In an attempt to revive the resort’s sagging economy, advertising agencies for some of the hotels tried promoting Atlantic City as a “family resort.” The wide-open days were gone, and Atlantic City was now supposed to be a place where mom and pop could bring the kids. What a joke. People like Skinny D’Amato who could still remember Atlantic City in its glory days knew better. They understood their town could never compete as a family resort.

  As early as 1958, the resort’s Women’s Chamber of Commerce, at the urging of local hotel owner Mildred Fox, had gone on record in support of legalized gambling. A feisty little redhead with an Italian temperament—she was Fox née Logiovino—Mildred was forever banging heads with the local power establishment. Politically active, she was a dyed-in-the-wool FDR-JFK Democrat, not a Farleycrat. Atlantic City was her ho
me and she wasn’t leaving. Plucky but savvy, Mildred pushed the idea of legalizing gambling to anyone who would listen. “It was our only hope for saving the city. We were on our way to becoming a ghost town.” Fox, the mother of four, was the owner and operator of the Fox Manor, a small Pacific Avenue hotel specializing in honeymoon packages. At the time, there was still a small network of backroom gambling operations and for her efforts, Fox and her children received death threats. The FBI took the threats seriously and, with her permission, tapped her phone but were unable to trace any of the calls. For half the year special agents escorted the Fox children to and from school.

  By the early 1960s, the gambling rooms were gone, and gradually there developed a mentality that argued that if Atlantic City was ever to regain stature as a national resort, it needed an edge, the only logical one being casino-style gambling. Las Vegas had casinos and look what they were able to do in the desert. Think of what could be done with gambling in a town with the ocean and the Boardwalk, or so the logic went.

  Toward the end of his career when the idea was first suggested, Hap Farley refused to sponsor casino gambling. It may have been the only instance in which Farley put his political interests ahead of his city’s, or maybe he was weary with the battles to hold onto power and pessimistic there was any one cure. People intimate with Hap believe he was concerned over the scrutiny that would be brought to bear on his regime. Were the resort to become the Las Vegas of the East, state and federal law enforcement agencies would pay even closer attention to Atlantic City’s corruption, and Farley wanted none of that.