You are correct. I am now reading a book about some history in Cape May County,NJ. The author wrote the book in 1930. He writes about rigged local elections in the 1890s and early 1900s. The big money was pulling the strings.
My parents live in Cape May New Jersey and I’ve studied the long history of that place which begins in 1620
At that time in the late 1800s and early 1900s it was a major hotspot with giant hotels and people of all sorts of very influential stripes would come down from Philadelphia
All of the giant hotels except for Congress Hall burn down and giant fires at that time