Lorenzo Langford, Atlantic City's beleaguered mayor, stood off stage, suit jacket off in the heat, just over the governor's left shoulder.
It was a familiar scenario in a city where political careers crash with the predictability of waves at high tide: a mayor under fire, accusations of waste and ineptitude, outside authorities threatening to step in - and now, initiating that process.
Earlier in the day, Christie sliced through the niceties at an appearance at the Meadowlands, calling Atlantic City "a historically corrupt, ineffective, inefficient local government that has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars it has gotten over the years."
That there were no indictments announced was a novelty in a city where mayors and councilmen regularly are charged with criminal misdeeds.
The city's rogues' gallery includes convicted former Mayors Michael J. Matthews (corruption), James Usry (campaign finance shenanigans), and Robert Levy (falsifying his military record and then vanishing) in the casino era, and Mayors Richard Jackson and William T. Somers (bribery, both) in the late '60s and early '70s.
More recently, there has been City Council President Craig Callaway (convicted for bribery and secretly videotaping a rival councilman with a prostitute) and Councilman Marty Small (facing charges of voter fraud).
Just this week, a city worker was indicted for dealing heroin around the city's All Wars Memorial Building.
Historian Nelson Johnson said Christie's proposals to aid gaming and entertainment interests harken back to an earlier era of Atlantic City. Johnson's book Boardwalk Empire is the basis for the Prohibition-era HBO series, which debuts Sept. 19 and focuses on political boss and racketeer Enoch "Nucky" Johnson (renamed Thompson in the show).
