They Have No Choice

From high above the most dangerous streets in the nation, ­Camden looks like a city of promise, chest puffed out and swollen with pride, taking strong, confident strides toward its future. Just look to the north. The shiny, graffiti-free RiverLINE train rolls past the old RCA building, awaiting its makeover into high-end condos, and jogs on past Campbell’s Field and lifeless acres now earmarked for residential development. Imagine that—people moving into Camden. He’s had a hand in all of it.

Turn south and you’ll see the Tweeter Center, which has stolen summer concerts from the Mann across the river, so now everyone from Coldplay to Brooks & Dunn bypasses Philly and heads to South Jersey. Imagine that — Camden as a destination. He’s not surprised. He is George Norcross, and from the office window of one of his minions at the Delaware River Port Authority, the view is spectacular.

For Norcross, it’s not enough to have risen from his modest beginnings in Pennsauken to run Commerce Bank’s insurance division, complete with a seven-figure salary and some $88 million in stock. Not bad for a college dropout. But for Norcross, not bad is not nearly good enough. Not in business, and certainly not in politics, where the 49-year-old’s years of leading the Camden County Democrats and his fund-raising muscle have made him the most powerful boss south of Exit 7A, with considerable clout up the Turnpike as well. His Democratic faithful control Camden and Gloucester counties, the power seat of South Jersey, and pulls strings in most others. In Trenton, Norcross allies decide which judges are elected, the language of the state budget, and the passing of legislation. They also run agencies that fund million-dollar projects — those listed above and many, many more.

Like Camden from this aerial view, the machine Norcross has built in South Jersey is a thing of beauty from afar — a business-like plan that has ushered in a Democratic renaissance. But down on the street, where the heat rises off Admiral Wilson Boulevard like specters fleeing Hell, Camden’s portrait grows more ominous. So does the picture as one looks more closely at how Norcross commands power. This is where hardball politics ends and a culture of intimidation, dubbed “La Cosa Norcross” by his enemies, looms. His name is invoked in threatening phone calls, senators are F-bombed, and if his opponents are still kicking once they lose, he steps on their throats.

Norcross has long denied that side of his personality, and other than one slip-up in the statehouse a couple years back, it’s been tough to prove its existence. Then came the Palmyra tapes. A town councilman who claimed he was being threatened and bribed by Democratic loyalists to oust two enemies was wired, and in a recorded meeting, Norcross ordered him to “fire that fuck … get rid of [him] … and teach this jerk-off a lesson,” and said of the other that he was doing “everything humanly possible … things that are distasteful” to install him as a judge, which Norcross said was “the only way I can get rid of him.” More important, in light of this year’s governor’s race, was this: “In the end, the McGreeveys, the Corzines, they’re all going to be with me. Not because they like me, but because they have no choice.”

“I look at him with a combination of disdain and respect,” says one longtime GOP strategist. “The stuff he’s done outside the political sphere is appalling. But the political guy in me says, ‘God, he’s good. I wish I’d done that.’” And what greases the wheels of his Democratic woodchipper, grinding up and spitting out his enemies across the state, isn’t money. It isn’t some grand vision he has for South Jersey. Pull back the curtain on the Wizard, and you’ll find that all the regional improvements he’s demanded and the windfall of state aid he’s guided to Camden weren’t acts of philanthropy. Norcross simply wants to win.