The 1940 Election: Less Than Stellar for Hague
The 1940 election was the first gubernatorial election that ended up having an outcome that was unfavorable to Hague. Although he had openly supported Republican Harold G. Hoffman winning the nomination, Hoffman lost the primary to good government Republican Robert C. Hendrickson. As previously mentioned, Roosevelt had Hague endorse his Secretary of the Navy, Charles Edison. There were a few problems with Thomas Edison’s son for Hague, but the most important one was that Edison didn’t owe his political career to him. Thus, Edison very well could be (and was) a governor who stood independent of him in his dispensing of patronage and selections for public office, and reduced patronage for Hudson County (Murray, 34). Edison was the first governor during Hague’s time as mayor to really take a stand against him, and it was the first major blow he experienced. Edison had hoped for history to repeat itself in him being Governor Wilson and Hague being Newark’s Boss Smith (Fleming). The problem here was that Edison did not have the political command or skill of Wilson and Hague was more powerful than Smith had been at that time. He attempted to get the New Jersey Constitution updated with changes that increased the power of the governor. As Time Magazine (1944) wrote on the situation, “The 100-year-old present constitution is tailor-made for men of bad will who would make themselves the law. Under it, a governor has so little power that he cannot appoint his own cabinet; he is subject to the will of boss-appointed “department heads.” A fabulous bureaucracy has arisen: 135 separate state departments, and an archaic, top-heavy judicial setup of 17 different state court systems – many controlled by Hague. The new constitution would give the governor his own cabinet and more power, would cut the departments to 20 and the court system to six, would replace the bulky 16-man Court of Errors and Appeals with a Supreme Court of seven. Worst of all for Boss Hague: a provision requiring public officials to answer legislative inquiries or lose their jobs”. However, Hague managed to get the constitution defeated in the public referendum. Interestingly, Edison would be among the founders of the conservative organization Americans for Constitutional Action, and would serve as its first vice chairman. Still, Edison’s time as governor was a significant blow for Hague. Perhaps Hague would have a better time of it in the 1943 election, perhaps he could get his venerable man A. Harry Moore back in.
The 1943 Election: A Disaster for Hague
In 1943, Hague tried to recruit Moore for yet another term as governor, but Moore declined to continue running for public office, much to his dismay. Instead, Newark Mayor Vincent J. Murphy was the nominee, but he was up against someone who had done the job before: Walter Edge. Although Hudson County voted the strongest for Murphy of all counties, it was not enough, and Edge won the election by 11 points. Governor Edge proceeded to combat the Hague machine through his attorney general, Walter Van Riper, who initiated raids on a source of revenue for the Hague machine: protected horse race gambling establishments. Although Hague managed to get Van Riper indicted on trumped-up corruption charges, he was acquitted at trial, and some of the witnesses against him had probably committed perjury (Fleming). Furthermore, the Edge Administration got voting machines installed in Hudson County to crack down on fraud. However, Hague was, as mentioned in part I, quite skilled at getting turnout high without voter fraud, thus he and his machine were still able to win elections. However, a factor that had helped him win elections had started to chip away at his machine’s power: ethnicity. Hague’s rise was the rise of Irish Catholic voters, but Jersey City’s population was getting more and more Italian and Polish Catholics, and their general lack of representation in the machine was a sore spot. Another problem was that Hague was spending less time in Jersey City and more time in Florida, meaning that his deputy was increasingly serving as his mouthpiece; not quite the threat of Hague being there personally. Worse yet, the number of positions appointed by the governor that he had power over was declining since the longer he didn’t call the shots, the more people who were independent of him were appointed as the terms of his people expired. In 1946, yet another governor was elected who could not be counted on to supply patronage in Republican Alfred Driscoll, who would also succeed where Edison could not in getting the New Jersey Constitution updated, and this included replacing the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals with the New Jersey Supreme Court. On June 4, 1947, Hague resigned, having his nephew Frank Hague Eggers take his place. However, it was soon clear that Eggers was taking orders from Hague; Hague had racked up massive phone bills for his calls from Florida to New Jersey. Thus, he was still essentially acting as mayor, much of the time doing so from Florida.
1949: The Year of Hague’s Waterloo, and The End
In the mayoral election, it was former ally John V. Kenny, the son of saloon owner Nat Kenny who had loaned Hague money for his first ever campaign, against Frank Hague Eggers. As mentioned earlier, Italian and Polish Catholics were out in the cold from the Hague machine, and Kenny took advantage of this development as well as money he received from Republican sources. A sign of Hague’s waning power was when at a campaign event Hague, his nephew, and others in his entourage were pelted by eggs by the crowd and while the others retreated, Hague stood and stared down the crowd when a man screamed at him “G’wan back to Florida!” and he in turn pointed at the man and shouted “Arrest that man!” (Fleming) However, the police officers present were not supportive of Hague, and thus did nothing, a marked contrast to Hague’s days of power in which police would indeed arrest, and probably work over, that man. Indeed, all those who had problems with Hague and his machine lined up behind Kenny, and he did win the election. Although you might think this a happy ending, it should also be noted that although the typical vote-buying practices were used by the Hague machine to try to hold on, the Kenny campaign also bribed voters, and crucially paid more per bribe at $15, $10 more than the going rate the Hague campaign was employing (Fleming). Kenny’s victory in truth was not one for good government, even if many of his supporters saw it that way, rather it replaced one corrupt regime for another. However, Hague still had numerous public officials behind him in Jersey City, thus he still had a lot of power behind the scenes. The best way Hague could reaffirm his power at this point was to secure the election of a Democratic governor.
Up for reelection in 1949 was Republican Alfred Driscoll, and Hague had found a candidate who was pretty good on paper to run against him in former Congressman Elmer Wene, who had represented the normally Republican 2nd district, which includes Atlantic City, in Congress for three terms. If Wene had been elected, Hague could count on him to appoint a prosecutor on his side, and with Hague still having control over grand jury selection, he could get convictions on Kenny officials (Fleming). However, the man who defeated Hague here was Hague himself. He made a fatal blunder when he declared, “We’ll be back in the driver’s seat in Trenton in January” (Fleming). Republicans were thus able to campaign against Hague yet again in this election, and Wene lost. Kenny had taken lessons from Hague here on what he did in the 1916 gubernatorial election by pulling back his political machine, and Hudson County delivered less for the Democrats than usual. The power of Hague in Jersey City was now completely broken, and he stepped down as the leader of the Democratic Party in New Jersey and in Hudson County. He would nonetheless retain his post as vice chairman of the DNC until 1952. In his twilight years, Hague seemed to have some remorse over his actions in office as he would call one of his old City Hall men in the middle of the night and ask him to see if the families of people he had ruined during his time in office needed assistance, but they would invariably either slam the door on the official or flatly refuse help (Fleming). Hague only returned to New Jersey in a casket after his death on January 1, 1956. Not many sent flowers on his departure, as he was a feared, not a loved figure. One elderly woman held up a sign at his funeral that read, “God have mercy on his sinful, greedy soul” (Time Magazine, 1956). Those who supported him did so out of a feeling that Jersey City, and particularly its majority Irish Catholic residents, had needed a fighter.
Was Hague Left or Right? Does it Matter?
There are several ways to interpret Frank Hague politically. There are numerous indicators that point him to the left, including his support for Wilsonian progressivism, his steep tax increases for corporations, his high tax and spend regime as mayor, his extremely high level of public employment, and his establishment of mostly socialized medicine at his hospitals. Furthermore, he was a strong booster of FDR and the New Deal. However, Hague supported people of numerous stripes for public office along with Roosevelt. He backed liberals such as Mary Norton for Congress but also more conservative types in the Democratic Party such as Edward Edwards and A. Harry Moore for governor. He also even supported Republican Harold Hoffman for governor, who had had a conservative record while in Congress. Hague’s campaign against the CIO and communism in 1938 can certainly not be called liberal, nor can his strong use of police or his crackdown on prostitution. Yet, what we can see in these endorsements and most of his actions are moves that increased or maintained his power. Supporting FDR was the smart thing for him to do and strongly contributed to him getting to the height of power, likewise the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations he certainly saw as a threat to his power. His support of Edwards, Moore, and Hoffman were for the purposes of getting his people in public positions, thereby maintaining and growing his power. He was willing to work with anyone who would elevate his power. How does one split the ideology from Hague and what fits into his overall schemes for power? There was, I think a certain authenticity on his anti-corporate pushes as well as his crackdown on prostitution. He was genuinely supportive of pushing back against big business and his crackdown on prostitution was in line with his Catholic morality. Frank Hague was the most powerful of all the city bosses, perhaps in US history, and unlike some others such as Jim Curley of Boston and Thomas Pendergast of Kansas City, he avoided jailtime.
References
Fleming, T. (1969, June). The Political Machine II: A Case History ‘I Am The Law”. American Heritage, 20(4).
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https://www.americanheritage.com/political-machine-ii-case-history-i-am-law
Johnson, N. Prologue: Power Doesn’t Corrupt: It Reveals. De Gruyter Brill.
Murray, J.M. (2023). The Real “Stolen Election”: Frank Hague and New Jersey’s 1937 Race for Governor. NJS: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
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New Jersey: Edison’s Magna Carta. (1944, October 23). Time Magazine.
Retrieved from
https://time.com/archive/6865584/new-jersey-edisons-magna-carta/
New Jersey: Hague’s End (1949, May 23). Time Magazine.
Retrieved from
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,794736-2,00.html
New Jersey: When The Big Boy Goes… (1956, January 16). Time Magazine.
Retrieved from
https://time.com/archive/6799264/new-jersey-when-the-big-boy-goes/
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 