Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (14 page)

There were key leaders of the Northside who were part of Kuehnle’s organization. One such poll worker was discussed before the Macksey Committee. “So after that, men came out from the polls and would hand the man a slip; he was a very well dressed darkey, a dude, rather, he was too well-dressed for his color, he walked up the street with them and he would take out his roll and give them money. I saw him do that time and time again.”

In all, there were approximately 3,000 fraudulent votes cast in Atlantic City in the election of 1910, but there’s more to the story. In one district, two persistent Democratic challengers who protested fraudulent votes were drugged. They were given drinking water with a “shoe fly” in it. Shoe fly is a concoction of tartar emetic, which induces vomiting, and eleatarium, which causes diarrhea. It is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. One drink of a shoe fly and a Democratic challenger was done for the day. New registrants were added to the voter registration books on Election Day by the officials at the polls. Ballot boxes were removed from the view of the general public and challengers who objected were forcibly removed from the polls by local police officers.

Kuehnle’s people engaged in a practice known as “colonizing” voters, which involved hundreds of fictitious voters being registered at local hotels. The fraud was so widespread and well organized that it couldn’t possibly have occurred without a close working relationship between the Republican organization and dozens of small hotel and boardinghouse owners of Atlantic City. Additionally, many transient seasonal workers of various hotels, restaurants, shops, and arcades, referred to as “floaters,” registered to vote in Atlantic City by using their place of summer employment as their address. They returned from out-of-town to cast their vote on Election Day. That year, hundreds of floaters were given train fare and paid to come back to town to vote for Vivian Lewis.

The Commodore himself was called before the committee and was asked what he knew of “the padded registration in Atlantic City last Fall.” In response to a question concerning his involvement in voting fraud, Kuehnle replied, “Why my instructions to the workers was that we didn’t want any padded lists, because we had enough Republican votes in Atlantic City and county to win the election at any time.” Despite the Commodore’s testimony, the Macksey Committee had more than enough information to prove widespread voter fraud.

The next step for Governor Wilson was to convert the committee’s report into criminal indictments. That wouldn’t be easy, and assuming an indictment could be obtained, securing convictions would be even harder. The last line of defense for Kuehnle’s machine were key players in the criminal justice system who could be counted on to frustrate the process. Realizing that County Prosecutor Clarence Goldenberg was a pawn of the Commodore, Wilson asked the legislature to enact special legislation enabling the attorney general to go into any county and conduct an investigation, replacing the local prosecutor. The legislature gave the governor what he wanted, and Attorney General Edmund Wilson moved in to put together criminal charges. But there was one more obstacle, the county sheriff. The sheriff was now Smith Johnson’s son, Enoch. Sam Kirby had moved on to county clerk. Enoch Johnson had learned how to draw a grand jury from his father and there was no way any grand jury he chose would return an indictment against an Atlantic City politician.

The first presentation of evidence secured by the Macksey Committee was to a grand jury sitting before Judge Thomas Trenchard, a product of the Commodore’s machine. After hearing the evidence presented, the grand jury deliberated and found no basis for an indictment. Governor Wilson was incensed and made a move to replace both Sheriff Johnson and Judge Trenchard. Wilson used a vacancy in the court system to appoint Samuel Kalish, an independently wealthy and respected trial attorney from Mercer County. Upon arriving in Atlantic County, Judge Kalish ordered the sheriff to draw a grand jury and to present the members in court to be admonished prior to commencing their duties. When the jurors appeared, Attorney General Wilson noticed that one of them was Thomas Bowman, who had been named in the Macksey Committee report. Bowman was one of the defendants to be charged with election fraud. Judge Kalish dismissed Bowman and the entire grand jury.

Over Johnson’s protests Kalish utilized a little known statute to appoint a committee of “elisors” and empowered them to choose a grand jury of 23 men, comprised of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Prohibitionists. The Commodore was powerless to stop Attorney General Wilson. With Sheriff Johnson and his hand-picked grand jury out of the way, the criminal justice system proceeded.

The new grand jury returned indictments naming more than 120 defendants, many of whom held positions in city government or the Republican organization. There was Kuehnle, Sheriff Enoch Johnson, Mayor George Carmany, City Councilman Henry Holte, City Clerk Louis Donnelly, Building Inspector Al Gillison, Health Inspector Theodore Voelme, Atlantic City Electric President Lyman Byers, and on and on. These indictments all dealt with election fraud and it was naïve for Governor Wilson to expect an Atlantic County jury to return guilty verdicts against officials of the Republican Party. Nearly everyone was acquitted.

One of the defendants acquitted was Enoch Johnson. His trial helped launch him on his way to becoming Kuehnle’s successor. Represented by long-time friend and political attorney Emerson Richards, Johnson took the stand in his own defense and arrogantly defied Attorney General Wilson. He referred to the presiding judge by his first name and addressed the jurors directly, many of whom were supporters of the Republican machine. Neither Johnson nor anyone else of importance in Kuehnle’s organization was convicted of election fraud.

Simultaneous with the investigation into election fraud was an inquiry of official corruption in Atlantic City’s government. It was no secret that Kuehnle and his lieutenants had been personally benefiting from municipal contracts. The requirement of public employees to pay a portion of their salary to the Republican Party and kickbacks on city contracts were common knowledge.

In July 1911, newspaperman Harvey Thomas arranged a meeting between Attorney General Wilson and private detective William J. Burns. Long before criminal lawyers would debate the concept of entrapment, Burns hit upon an idea to smoke out Atlantic City’s elected officials, which the attorney general endorsed. Burns had one of his operatives, Frank Smiley, pose as “Mr. Franklin,” a successful New York City contractor. Mr. Franklin rented an elaborate suite of rooms at one of the fancy Boardwalk hotels and made a splash around town as a big spender. Mr. Franklin got the ear of the city councilmen and proposed to each of them that what the resort needed was a concrete Boardwalk. He persuaded five council members to adopt an ordinance appropriating $1,000,000 for the project and paid each of them $500 for their vote. The entire transaction with each council member was recorded by the newly invented dictograph. When confronted with the stenographic transcript of their conversations with Mr. Franklin, each of the councilmen confessed.

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.