Five “Boardwalk Empire” Scenes that Mirror Norcross Machine Operations
Odd as it may sound, I was first interested in the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” for family reasons. When my great grandparents left Donegal for the US, they each brought a sibling with them. My great grandfather brought his brother; my great grandmother brought her sister. Their two siblings married. My great grandparents settled in South Philly where my great grandfather got a job on the docks. His brother Frank decided to try his luck a little further south and set up a speakeasy in Atlantic City, within the vast empire of political boss, Enoch “Nucky” Johnson. HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” dramatizes life inside Nucky’s political machine.
Though I expected to get some creative glimpses into the Prohibition era world of my great uncle, what I saw in the show had less to do with the past and more to do with the present. There were moments in the first two seasons that had me exclaiming aloud to my TV, “oh my God, that’s exactly what the Norcross machine does today!” Times change but apparently the political machine playbook does not. Here are some of the shared machine moves I noticed:
- Separating Issues From Operations
In a scene at the start of the series, Nucky gives an impassioned speech to a room full of women activists, exclaiming “prohibition is progress.” He tells a sad story of growing up in poverty and by the end the crowd is in tears. He then drives directly to a backroom meeting of his cronies — the Mayor, his sheriff brother and other elected officials — to explain how they are going to profit off illegal liquor. Throughout the show, Nucky is not a hard drinker nor is he a prohibitionist. He’s just in it to make money.
As James Scott notes in “Corruption, Machine Politics & Political Change,” “the machine is a non-ideological organization, interested less in political principle than in securing and holding office for its leaders and distributing income for those who run it and work for it.” The Norcross machine operates the same way. There’s plenty of issue window dressing and desperate grabs at buzzword labels but a peek behind the curtain reveals that it is all about backroom control of power and profit. George Norcross’s op-ed on a proposed University merger that would have benefited him illustrates this well. Spin however you need to. Just keep making money.
2. Bossism as the Real Rule of Law
Throughout the first season of the show, Nucky spars with North Jersey boss Frank Hague over the public dollars they are both trying to get their hands on. Nucky wants a hefty roads appropriation bill to tilt his way. He is interested in a highway to take people South, directly to Atlantic City. It will benefit the city but of course will mostly benefit him (not unlike the tax breaks that supposedly benefited Camden but mostly benefited Norcross and cronies).
Nucky thinks he’s got a politician in his pocket to keep the money in AC but Hague surprises Nucky by telling him that the politician in question, Senator Walter Edge, is playing both sides. Edge has already promised the money to Hague, a Democrat, but has kept quiet about it because he wants Nucky to nominate him at the Republican National Convention. Nucky gets his revenge by torpedoing Edge’s higher office ambitions. Nucky asks Hague why he shared the information about Edge’s shifting loyalties and Hague tells him that politicians come and go but “bosses like us are here to stay.”
Hearing that line made me think of the infamous Palmyra Tapes. Those tapes recorded George Norcross boasting about all the politicians he owns. It has also been established many times that George Norcross will go to great lengths to exact revenge against anyone he feels has been disloyal to him.
3. The Camden County Shuffle (AC Style!)
In the episode “Belle Femme,” Margaret, Nucky’s then girlfriend, later wife, takes issue with his control of elected officials, asking if everyone just does what he tells them to do. Nucky says this isn’t true, that he just “provides some continuity” and if new people came into power they wouldn’t know what they were doing. Really, Nucky does install and dethrone as he sees fit.
In that same episode, he makes a decision that the sitting mayor, Harry Bacharach, is too vulnerable to losing re-election and has to be replaced. In a meeting with the man he wants to shuffle in, Edward Bader, Nucky says that Bacharach is stepping down for health reasons. When Bader asks after Bacharach’s health, Nucky jokes: “What’s wrong with him? I’ll decide when I have your answer.”
Hearing this, I couldn’t help but think of the sudden resignation of Camden Mayor Frank Moran due to unspecified health issues. Moran was swiftly replaced with Vic Carstarphen in advance of the mayoral race which Carstarphen won. The Norcross machine has an established reliance on the Camden County shuffle, pulling one politician out and putting another in, usually just before an election so the public will be conned into thinking they were the decision makers, not the party boss. This shuffling is how George Norcross got his brother a seat in Congress.
4. Identity Politics & the Party Line
In the episode “Emerald City,” Nucky convinces Margaret to deliver a speech to a roomful of suffragettes, asking for their support of Republican mayoral candidate, Edward Bader. The reason he needs her to do this, he says, is because he is worried about the power of the party line which he feels is weak at the moment. He cajoles her into speaking to a room full of women who have newly acquired the right to vote and asking them to vote the Republican line. Margaret gives a rousing speech and clearly reaches the hearts and minds of the women in the room. As she’s standing on stage though she notices Nucky conspiratorially whispering to his cronies, all fellow rich white men.
The Norcross machine plays similar identity politics games, putting women and people of color out in front but only if they are loyalists. If these individuals question operations at all, they are out of the machine completely. This shallow lip service to real diverse representation also allows the Norcross machine to hide more overtly racist and classist maneuvers such as a recent attempt by the the mostly white, mostly white collar, mostly suburban county government to take over day to day operations of Camden, an economically disadvantaged minority majority city.
5. Alliances Trump Party Affiliation
In the episode “Return to Normalcy,” Nucky gets the election outcome he desired. His puppet Bader wins. As his very first order of business, Bader does some shuffling at Nucky’s order. The acting sheriff is unpleasantly surprised to hear that Bader is accepting a resignation he never made. Nucky’s brother, Eli, is back in as sheriff. Democratic party boss Frank Hague celebrates with Nucky and his loyal Republican machine politicians on election night.
The onscreen chumminess of these two political bosses reminded me of the close working relationship of George Norcross and Republican Governor Chris Christie. Shared opportunistic interests matter far more than any party affiliation. George Norcross has also been a good friend to Donald Trump over the years.
Watching “Boardwalk Empire” while living in the heart of the Norcross political machine, I couldn’t help but wonder, is bossism here to stay — a sad, inevitable fate for South Jersey? I place my hope for a functioning democracy in an informed electorate becoming aware of just how corrupt and costly machine politics are, how the system mainly serves the white male patriarchy. For the uninitiated, “Boardwalk Empire” isn’t a bad place to start studying Machine Politics 101.
