January 20, 1883 - Enoch L. Johnson
For roughly three decades, Johnson ran Atlantic City as something close to a personal fiefdom, fusing political office with organized crime in a way that made the two effectively indistinguishable. His machine controlled not just the city but the surrounding county government, and Prohibition-era Atlantic City became a well-known sanctuary precisely because he allowed it to be. What makes his tenure historically significant is less its criminality than its durability — the arrangement held for thirty years before federal tax charges finally brought it down.
From Wikipedia
Enoch Lewis "Nucky" Johnson (January 20, 1883 - December 9, 1968) was an American politician from the Republican Party who served as an Atlantic City political boss, sheriff of Atlantic County, businessman, and crime boss who was the leader of the political machine that controlled Atlantic City and the Atlantic County government from the 1910s until his conviction and imprisonment in 1941. His rule encompassed the Roaring Twenties when Atlantic City was at the height of its popularity as a refuge from Prohibition. In addition to bootlegging, the criminal aspect of his organization was also involved in gambling and prostitution. The HBO series Boardwalk Empire was loosely based on Johnson, portrayed by Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson.
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