Word: pendergast
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...started in 1946, when the President decided to purge him from Congress because Slaughter, a Democrat from part of Harry Truman's own home territory, the Fifth Missouri District, persistently voted against the Truman program. Jim Pendergast, his Kansas City henchmen and other good Democrats, including the late Charlie Binaggio, were quick to oblige, but they were a little clumsy about it. They purged Roger Slaughter in the primaries, all right, but they let a Republican win the seat in the finals. And, after the election, 118 vote-fraud indictments were returned against Democratic primary workers. (Two were convicted...
Bums & Gandy-Dancers. Charles Binaggio started modestly enough, in the Kansas City underworld nurtured by the late Boss Tom Pendergast. The storm that swept old Tom into prison passed him by, and he was arrested only occasionally on gambling and bootlegging charges. He took over the heavily Italian First Ward with its flophouse bums, indigents, and gandy-dancers, slowly began building back the lopsided majorities of Pendergast days. He took cuts on gambling, used his "influence" to sell Canadian Ace Beer, a brew produced by prosperous relicts of the old Capone syndicate in Chicago. He bought a handsome house...
Join-or Else. Gangland murders increased, rival racketeers died untidily, and Charlie prospered. Binaggio decided he was big enough to take on Tom Pendergast's nephew Jim, the titular Democratic boss of Kansas City. In the 1948 primary, Binaggio's candidates beat Pendergast's for every county office...
...head. He went to bigger men than he in the underworld, promised that if his man Forrest Smith was elected governor, the state would be thrown wide open to gambling, slots and betting. All Charlie wanted was $100,000 or so for the campaign. He got it. Said Jim Pendergast: "My God, how he spent that money. He was paying-as high as $50 for some of the boarding houses we used...
...little patronage from the new governor, none at all from Harry Truman. A bill to legalize horse-race betting was laughed out of the legislature. Police raids on gambling joints continued. The President, annoyed that a noisome character like Binaggio should shunt aside his good friend Jim Pendergast, loosed a swarm of FBI men on him. A grand jury began investigating Binaggio and Kansas City crime. What was worse, the racketeers became insistent: an open city or their $100,000 back...