AHC: US President with Mafia Ties

Disclaimer: Yes, there have been claims of Presidents having Mafia ties. All have been unsubstantiated, and/or are just popular myth said a dozen times over, with all the times they've been said used to say they are well known fact and without evidence to back them up. One of the most well known are the Kennedy's, which is a myth: Joe Sr was not a bootlegger nor involved with mafia figures as a result. I also know of a claim about Nixon. For the purposes of this thread, none of these claims will be treated as any more than myth and urban legend as they most likely are anyway.

The challenge here is to get a United States politician to the highest office in the land who has ties to Organized Crime.
 
There are more than we like to admit. OTL John Adams. And it's cute but a bit silly to disregard JFK and especially Nixon. Where do you draw the line? Does Reagan smuggling in Cotras cocaine via the CIA count, or not because it was funneled to black distributors and not really Italian ones?
 
Herbert Hoover? He ran a few gentlemen's clubs in San Francisco if I remember right, maybe have him own a few more properties on the East Coast or Chicago to give him some mafia ties?
 
OTL John Adams. And it's cute but a bit silly to disregard JFK and especially Nixon.

Oh stop. It's all a bunch of heresay and slander repackaged every decade, which started in 1960 with the slander the Republicans used against Kennedy when he was running, repeated ad infinitum with no source knowing the origin and just quoting a guy's book which quoted another guy's book which quoted another guy's book which quoted another guy's book on and on back to one guy who made a slanderous statement, who didn't even actually say what he was interpreted as saying, but the story gets built up and changed through a game of Chinese whispers until it becomes a consensus which doesn't understand its own foundations. The Kennedy mafia story evolved from 1960 when a Republican paper published that Joe Kennedy made a deal to import liquor during prohibition, with the assertion that he was a bootlegger. That's where the story of the mafia started since if he was a bootlegger and as wealthy a man he was, he'd be involved with organized crime. That's the way the story was subsequently spun, and it was also spun that that's how he made his fortune. The problem being it's all bull. Joe Kennedy did make that deal, but he did it when the repeal of Prohibition was passed and the deal was for the liquor to come in after Prohibition's end went into effect. So he wasn't a bootlegger, nor a rum runner, and he wasn't in bed with the mob, and the mob didn't get his son elected. 50 years of bull dates back to one story by a slandering pro-Nixon journalist whose story got picked up and spun a thousand times over into this giant thing.

Nixon, what evidence is there that Nixon was ever in bed with the mafia?

It looks sexy, and gossip and dirty details are always the most important things to people; as human's, we're programmed for it. But fact outweighs good story, and the fact is there is no fact.
 
William bulger brother of whitey bulger was a.prominent politician in Massachusetts. In the 70's thrum the late 90's. He was a state Rep and senator. Assume he runs for a US house seat in the early 80s and governor in late 80s early 90s or so. In 2000 Gore selects him over Lieberman and they win. Hes Vp so if something happens to Al....
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
That's OTL. Kennedy's pappy had ties with organized crime, and Nixon was rather openly supportive of the Mafia.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Nixon, what evidence is there that Nixon was ever in bed with the mafia?
You mean aside from his early career being directly funded by Mickey Cohen, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano? His close ties to KNOWN Mafia associates Murray Chotiner and Bebe Rebozo? Or his numerous (comped) trips to Mafia-owned hotel-casinos in Cuba? Or calling off Justice Department obstruction/investigation into the Mafia-Hughes deals over Vegas (literally the opposite of Johnson's policy)? Or the Hoffa pardon? The list goes on. I'll grant Kennedy a pass on his Dad's shenanigans, but Nixon was mobbed-up since the late '40s on.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
And I can address the John Adams bit.

Adams cut his teeth as a mob lawyer; defending smugglers and waterfront toughs associated with John Hancock and Sam Adams. Before the Revolution, the merchant-lawyer-thug alliance in East Coast cities filled the same void that Mafiosi would fill in later generations, though they were far more socially kosher than La Cosa Nostra ever was.

Of course, the shadiness of these relationships evaporated post-Independence, so I don't think it's fair to say that Adams had "organized crime" ties after the 1770s.
 
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What does it take to make Mafia ties necessary to get elected? Restrictions on money from legal donors? Or, as it seems to me, a much more corrupt election process, where "the Chicago way" is usual (almost) everywhere.:eek::eek:

Or where crime is just more prevalent generally, so Mafia ties aren't as big a negative? (Think Chicago again.)
 
Thinking of Chicago, William Hale Thompson (Mayor 1915-23 and 1927-31) might have had a shot at being Hoover's running mate in 1928. If Al Capone then sent Hoover a "pineapple"...
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Thinking of Chicago, William Hale Thompson (Mayor 1915-23 and 1927-31) might have had a shot at being Hoover's running mate in 1928. If Al Capone then sent Hoover a "pineapple"...
That's a rather alarming scenario that deserves exploring. Though I doubt if Hoover would agree to have a notorious wet (to say nothing of crook) like Thompson on his ticket.
 
Though I doubt if Hoover would agree to have a notorious wet (to say nothing of crook) like Thompson on his ticket.

Yes, the circumstances would have to be very particularly. Maybe if the Republicans lose in 1920 and 1924, so they're desperate come 1928 and an urban populist from the mid-West seems like their salvation.
 
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