John Sheridan decided to go work for norcross at Cooper university hospital in Camden at a curious time. It was just months after damaging recordings of norcross came out. Dubbed the Palmyra tapes, the recordings caught him bullying and offering a favor to a small town official. He also boasted about his power. I said, you have to understand something. I'm not going to tell you this talk to insult you. You have to understand something. I'm not going to tell you this to insult you. They're all going to be with me. But in the end, the greaves, the core designs, they're all going to be with me. Because they like me. But because they have no choice. Not because they like me, but because they have no choice. For the New Jersey and initiated, those are two of our former governors. It was a pretty big story in New Jersey, and yet just months after the tapes went public, John Sheridan agreed to go work for norcross at Cooper university hospital. I was curious to know what his son Mark thought about it. He didn't express any concerns about George norcross reputation. I mean, this is now post the Palmyra tapes and, you know, people know what kind of an operator he is at this point. So I asked him about that. He had this view that George's bark was worse than his bite. And that George really was working to redo his image and wanted to fix Camden, the Nordic cross family had a long storied history in Camden and my dad believed George generally wanted to fix it. And I think that's been borne out. George E norcross the third was born in Camden, and grew up in Pennsylvania, a blue collar town right next door. He's 66. A few years ago, he was said to be worth $245 million. He owns a multi-million dollar insurance brokerage that does a very lucrative business with government entities all over New Jersey. Norcross didn't run for office, but he hand picked candidates, raised money for them, and hired expert campaign consultants and pollsters. By the 1990s, nor cross had a network across south Jersey, who owed him. Mares and people who served on city councils, school boards, and even the state legislature. There's nothing harder to do in politics than they ask somebody for money. Micah Rasmussen is the director at the center for politics at writer university. But he's not just an academic. He ran local campaigns in south Jersey. He worked in the state legislature, and he worked for a governor. Throughout it all, he saw how norcross became powerful by raising campaign cash for local candidates. There's nothing more on pleasure. Unless you're good at it, unless you're just masterful at it, as nor cross is. The politicians who took norcross money, they could be independent, as long as they voted with the boss on the things he cared about. You knew the votes that were important, who was going to be the speaker of the assembly. Who was going to be the Senate president. Who was going to wield the power. Those were votes where you, that came with the bargain. The strategy worked. In 2009, the norcross allies elected Steve Sweeney, president of the state Senate. That's the most powerful person in the state legislature, and makes him second only to the governor's statewide. That meant Sweeney could control what bills came up for a vote and who would serve on which committees. The relationship between Sweeney and norcross is often boiled down in news articles to one phrase Sweeney, the childhood friend of norcross. But I got my hands on an email chain from 2014 that showed the kind of power that norcross held over Sweeney. In the thread, Sweeney received a list of bills from his assistant that are ready to be put up for a vote. He forwarded the list to norcross with a note, is there anything on this list that bothers you? In a one word reply nor cross approved Sweeney putting the bills