Walter Evans Edge - Relationship With Atlantic County Republican Organization

Relationship With Atlantic County Republican Organization

Throughout Edge's political career, his home county, Atlantic County, was controlled by a Republican political machine that was extensively involved in the protection of Atlantic City's vice industry and other corruption. When Edge first ran for public office in 1904, he ran as a reformer against a candidate supported by the party establishment. Edge enlisted the support of many prominent Atlantic City citizens, and used his Atlantic City Daily Press to promote his candidacy and expose the activities of the machine. Edge fully expected to win the election and was shocked when he was defeated. He later blamed his defeat on the “Scott machine” (a reference to the organization led by County Clerk Lewis P. Scott) and party boss control of voting places and ballot counting.

After his defeat, Edge's Daily Press became a faithful supporter of the Republican organization. Edge subsequently ran with the support of the party establishment for state legislature, even campaigning when he ran for state senate in 1910 with Louis Kuehnle, Scott’s successor as leader of the organization. When he ran for governor in 1916, Edge’s campaign manager was Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, who had replaced Kuehnle as boss of the Atlantic County machine after Kuehnle was convicted of corruption related charges in 1911. Johnson and Hudson County Democratic leader Frank Hague were widely credited with engineering Edge’s 1916 victory, and Johnson also served as Edge’s campaign manager during his successful run for the United States Senate in 1918.

In 1924, however, the relationship between Edge and Johnson openly soured. In the Atlantic City Commission election that year, Johnson’s organization backed a slate of candidates led by incumbent mayor Edward L. Bader. Bader was opposed by a ticket led by former mayor Harry Bacharach. The Bacharach ticket ran on an anti-vice platform and gained the support of Johnson’s opponents. Bader’s slate won the bitter election, which was marked by allegations of widespread organization-backed voter fraud. A month after the election, Edge replaced Johnson as the manager of his senate reelection campaign amid rumors that Johnson was unhappy about the “hands off” policy that Edge had taken during the recent election in which Johnson’s leadership had been threatened. Thereafter, the Atlantic County Republican organization led by Johnson refused to support Edge in his 1924 primary election contest against Hamilton F. Kean.

Although in 1927 Johnson touted Edge as a potential presidential candidate, in 1928 the two men openly broke. The initial indication of a break was Johnson’s support of Hamilton F. Kean for the Republican nomination for United States senator, while Edge was backing Edward C. Stokes. The split noticeably widened after Edge abandoned his policy of non-interference in purely local politics and backed Robert M. Johnston for Atlantic County state senator in the Republican primary. This prompted Johnson to openly back incumbent senator Emerson L. Richards, who was Edge’s political and personal foe. The ensuing election was described as a “trial of strength in Atlantic County, the outcome of which may spell the doom of the loser”. The election results proved to be a disaster for Edge, whose candidates lost Atlantic County to the Johnson backed candidates by margins exceeding three to one, and with Richards claiming the results marked Edge’s “political extinction”. In the wake of the election, Edge called for party unity, and Johnson attempted to brush aside any damage to Edge by denying claims that the election results meant the end of his political career or that the election had been against Edge.

Edge, who faced a reelection campaign in 1930, resigned from the United States Senate in 1929 to accept appointment as Ambassador to France.

In his 1948 memoirs, A Jerseyman's Journal, Edge makes no mention of either Kuehnle or Johnson, who was imprisoned in 1941 for income tax evasion. Johnson’s successor as leader of the Atlantic County Republican organization, Frank “Hap” Farley, is mentioned once, in connection with events that transpired while Edge was out-of-state during his second term as governor, and Farley, as state senate president, was acting governor. Edge’s memoirs have been criticized for failing to discuss how he rose in politics and in skipping over the skullduggery involved in interesting political situations, and his failure to discuss his relationship and disagreements with the Atlantic County machine provide examples of those omissions.