Atlantic City mayor preparing to seek another term

Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small, Sr. is planning to seek re-election next year despite indictments for child abuse and witness tampering – and there’s a decent chance he will win.

Sources with knowledge of Small’s plans say he will announce his candidacy during the first week of 2025 and has already assembled a slate of city council candidates.

So far, no one has entered the race to challenge Small in the June Democratic primary or the general election.

One possible opponent is Bob McDevitt, who retired in 2023 after 26 years as president of Local 54 Unite here, the casino workers union.

There was some talk of Republican Don Guardian making a comeback bid for the post he held from 2014 to 2017, but it now appears clear he will seek a third term in the State Assembly.

Small said on Wednesday that his department heads have successfully implemented 94% of their goals for 2024.

“Since I’ve been mayor, every single year we completed (at least) 90% of what we said we were going to do,” the Press of Atlantic City reported Small as saying.  That includes a 9% drop in the city’s crime rate and a 20% increase in arrests.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor added a charge of third-degree witness tampering yesterday, alleging that Small tried to get his child to change the story she told police.

Small became mayor in 2019 after Frank Gilliam resigned after admitting to stealing $87,000 from a youth basketball league.

Gilliam was the fourth mayor of Atlantic City to face legal issues since the city changed its form of government in 1981.

In all, four of the seven mayors have faced criminal charges during their time in office.

* Michael Matthews, an assemblyman and former freeholder, was elected mayor in 1982.  He was recalled in 1984 amidst allegations that two reputed mobsters had funneled money into his mayoral campaign.   Two weeks after the recall, federal prosecutions charged him with attempted extortion and taking bribes – and for dealings with Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo for tears.

* Jim Usry, elected mayor in the 1984 recall of Matthews, was charged with accepting bribes in 1989.  The charges were later dropped, and he pleaded guilty to failing to report campaign contributions.

* In a bizarre happenstance, Bob Levy became a national news story in 2007 when he disappeared from Atlantic City for two weeks without telling anyone where he went.  Levy, elected in 2006 after serving as chief of the Atlantic City Beach Patrol, had exaggerated what was an impressive military career in Vietnam.  He wound up pleading guilty to defrauding the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for receiving benefits for which he wasn’t entitled.