Nobody talks about Atlantic County the way they talk about Atlantic City. And that’s a problem — because Atlantic County is not Atlantic City. It’s nine hundred square miles of South Jersey pine, farmland, small towns, court dramas, helicopter crashes, and one of the most economically complicated stretches of land in the entire northeastern United States.
If your only mental image of this place is the Boardwalk and casino signs, you’re working with about ten percent of the picture.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
| Location | Southern New Jersey, about 60 miles southeast of Philadelphia |
| County seat | Mays Landing |
| Most famous municipality | Atlantic City |
| Population | Approximately 265,000 |
| Major industries | Gaming/hospitality, agriculture, healthcare, tourism |
| County prosecutor | William Reynolds |
| Current AC Mayor | Marty Small Sr. (reelected November 2025) |
| Notable towns | Hammonton, Pleasantville, Galloway, Egg Harbor Township |
| Known for | Casinos, Pine Barrens, Jersey Shore access, political turbulence |
| Local media | Press of Atlantic City, NJ.com, DownBeach.com, NBC Philadelphia |
The Trial That Swallowed the Year
Let’s not pretend there’s a more urgent story to lead with in 2025. There isn’t.
Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr. went on trial in December 2025 facing four counts — aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, terroristic threats, and witness tampering. Prosecutors said he struck his teenage daughter with a broom during an argument about whether she’d attend a city peace walk, allegedly hitting her hard enough that she lost consciousness. They also said he asked her to tell investigators a different version of events — that the head injury happened when she tripped and fell in her bedroom. Small got on the stand and denied all of it.
The jury deliberated for two and a half days. They came back not guilty on all four counts.
Small walked out of the Atlantic County courthouse and immediately delivered one of the more unfiltered post-verdict speeches you’ll hear from an elected official. “Atlantic City knows bull—-,” he said, “when they see it.” He told reporters he’d be back in City Hall the next morning. He called his acquittal “a win for everyone.”
The backstory here is genuinely complicated. Small became mayor in 2019 when his predecessor Frank Gilliam resigned after confessing to stealing close to $100,000 from a youth basketball charity program. So the city was already two mayors into unconventional territory before any of the 2025 drama started. Small was indicted in September 2024. He ran for reelection anyway — and won by 24 percentage points. The trial came weeks after that landslide. He won that too.
His wife La’Quetta Small — the superintendent of Atlantic City public schools — faces separate charges. Her trial was set for January 2026. The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office signaled it hadn’t decided yet whether to proceed. And Constance Days-Chapman, the former Atlantic City High School principal who first heard about the abuse from the couple’s daughter, was also charged with failing to report it to state child protection services. Days-Chapman was suspended and faces trial separately.
See also “GrammarVista.com: The Grammar Website That Can’t Decide What It Wants to Be“
Meanwhile in Hammonton, People Died in the Sky
December 28th, 2025. Five days before New Year’s. Two helicopters clipped each other midair over Hammonton Municipal Airport and fell out of the sky.
One pilot was killed at the scene. The other was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. He died the next day. Both men were alone in their aircraft — an Enstrom F-28A and an Enstrom 280C, if you want to get technical about it. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation. Video taken by a bystander showed one of the helicopters spinning uncontrolled as it dropped.
Hammonton sits in the interior of Atlantic County, surrounded by blueberry farms and Pine Barrens forest. About 15,000 people. Roughly 35 miles southeast of Philadelphia. It is not the kind of town where aviation disasters happen. And then it was.
That same town also showed up in the national news in 2025 for an unrelated reason — a fire at a historic country club that was noted for once having hosted an engagement party for Joe and Jill Biden. It was not a great stretch for Hammonton.
Atlantic City’s Long Economic Hangover
Here’s the context that makes all the political drama make more sense.
Atlantic City pioneered the idea — back in 1976 — that casino gambling could resurrect a dying resort economy. For a while, it worked. Then it stopped working. By 2014, four casinos had shut down in a single year, taking roughly 8,000 jobs with them. That one-year job loss in the Atlantic City metro area — which includes Hammonton — was the largest of any metro region in the entire United States according to federal labor statistics. The county’s unemployment rate hit 11 percent. More than double the national average at the time. Home foreclosures in Atlantic County climbed to the highest rate of any metropolitan area in the country.
When COVID hit in 2020, the situation turned critical again. Atlantic County’s economy — with 34 percent of its jobs in what economists call “at-risk industries” — ranked as the third most vulnerable metro area in the country to pandemic-related job losses, behind only Midland, Texas and Kahului, Hawaii. Casino shutdowns pushed nearly 30,000 people out of work overnight.
Some casinos have since reopened. Hard Rock took over the old Trump Taj Mahal property. Ocean Casino Resort found its footing. But the structural vulnerability of a county economy built this heavily on one sector has never fully been addressed. That reality sits underneath every political fight, every zoning decision, every school board drama in Atlantic City.
The Airshow Situation — Because Even That Got Complicated
The Atlantic City Airshow was a big deal. A real draw. Hundreds of thousands of people watch military and civilian aircraft over the beach every year.
It was canceled in 2024. Then it was nearly canceled again in 2025 before city officials and tourism advocates scrambled to save it. It came back — but with a new name. The details of the rebrand and the funding negotiations that saved it illustrate something true about how Atlantic City operates: almost nothing here runs smoothly, even the fun things. Everything requires a political fight.
The La’Quetta Small Indictment — A Different Kind of Problem
Separate from her husband’s now-resolved case, La’Quetta Small — as superintendent of Atlantic City’s public school system — was herself indicted. So was the principal who first received the couple’s daughter’s allegations about her father.
That’s the county prosecutor’s office pursuing three separate defendants across three different trials all connected to the same underlying family situation. It’s an unusual configuration, legally speaking. And it means Atlantic County’s courts stayed in the headlines well into 2026.
The prosecutor, William Reynolds, said after Marty Small’s acquittal that the verdict was disappointing but that he respected the judicial process. On La’Quetta Small’s trial — which was set for January — Reynolds indicated no final decision had been made about whether to proceed. Given what happened to the mayor’s case, the calculus there had presumably shifted.
What Doesn’t Make the Wire
The stuff that actually shapes daily life in Atlantic County doesn’t always make it to the big regional outlets. Code Blue alerts — when temperatures drop low enough that the county activates emergency warming protocols — get issued regularly throughout winter. The Pleasantville library branch had to close temporarily for HVAC repairs. The Mays Landing branch reopened after similar work. The Atlantic County Humane Society put out a public appeal after someone left three dogs outside their shelter in a rainstorm.
This is the county government at the ground level. It’s not dramatic. It’s the library being closed when you need it and the animal shelter asking the public to help them find a man who treated dogs like trash. It matters more to actual residents than most of what ends up on TV.
The county also launched a Central Municipal Court initiative expected to save participating municipalities around 45 percent in operating costs starting in 2025. Not a flashy story. Genuinely useful governance.
The Press Coverage Problem
Atlantic County has one major local newspaper with serious reach — the Press of Atlantic City — and a constellation of smaller outlets including DownBeach.com, NJ.com’s Atlantic coverage, and the New Jersey Globe for political news. The Philadelphia stations — Fox29, 6ABC, CBS Philadelphia — dip in whenever something is dramatic enough to warrant the drive down the expressway.
What this means is that genuinely important local stories sometimes don’t get sustained coverage. The economic displacement story, for instance — the long-term restructuring of a county that built everything around casino tax revenue — rarely gets the multi-part investigative treatment it deserves. The helicopter crash in Hammonton made national wire. The chronic underfunding of social services in a county with structural unemployment rarely does.
This is the normal local news problem. It’s just more pronounced when your county’s most famous city is the kind of place where national outlets only show up for trials and fires.
The Political Texture of the Place
Atlantic County is not a monolith politically. Atlantic City itself runs reliably Democratic — Small’s margins are proof of that. But the surrounding municipalities trend differently. Egg Harbor Township, Galloway, Hamilton — these are more competitive. The county as a whole has a Republican tilt outside the urban center.
This creates the kind of tension that makes every countywide office election competitive and makes the prosecutor’s relationship with the mayor’s office a frequent source of friction. Reynolds, the county prosecutor, pursued Marty Small aggressively through 2024 and 2025. Small called it political. Reynolds called it evidence-based. A jury sided with Small.
That kind of contested political terrain — where the Democratic mayor of the county’s biggest city and the county prosecutor operate in a state of open hostility — shapes what gets investigated, what gets charged, and what gets dropped. It’s not unique to Atlantic County. It’s just very visible here.
Final Words
Atlantic County is one of those places that gets reduced to its most dramatic exports — the Boardwalk, the casinos, the political scandals — and loses all its texture in the process.
But the texture is where the real story lives. It’s in Hammonton’s blueberry farms and the midair collision that killed two pilots over a small airport the week after Christmas. It’s in the Code Blue alerts that go out when temperatures drop and the county has to make sure nobody freezes. It’s in a decade of economic restructuring that the national media covered intensely for about eighteen months and then forgot about.
Marty Small won his trial and got reelected by a landslide in the same month. His wife’s trial loomed as 2026 started. The airshow came back. The library branch reopened. Two men died in the sky over Hammonton.
That’s Atlantic County news. All of it. Not just the part that makes the Philadelphia evening broadcast.
FAQs
1. Where exactly is Atlantic County, New Jersey?
It’s in southern New Jersey, roughly 60 miles southeast of Philadelphia. The county seat is Mays Landing, but the most well-known municipality is Atlantic City, right on the coast.
2. What is the biggest story in Atlantic County right now?
As of late 2025 and into 2026 — the ongoing legal drama surrounding Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr., his acquittal in December 2025, and the separate pending trial of his wife, La’Quetta Small, the city’s school superintendent.
3. What happened at the Hammonton helicopter crash?
On December 28, 2025, two helicopters collided midair near Hammonton Municipal Airport. Both pilots were killed — one at the scene, the other the following day in hospital. The FAA and NTSB launched investigations.
4. Who is Marty Small and why was he on trial?
Marty Small Sr. has been Atlantic City’s mayor since 2019. He was indicted in September 2024 on charges including aggravated assault and child endangerment, stemming from allegations he abused his teenage daughter and asked her to recant her statements to police. He was acquitted on all four counts in December 2025.
5. Was Marty Small reelected despite the indictment?
Yes. He ran for his second full term in November 2025 while under indictment and won by 24 percentage points — a margin his own attorneys noted was a record for Atlantic City.
6. What is the Atlantic County economic situation like?
Historically volatile and casino-dependent. A 2014 wave of four casino closures produced the largest metro-area job loss in the country that year. COVID-era shutdowns hit the county especially hard given its reliance on hospitality. Recovery has been uneven.
7. What happened to the Atlantic City Airshow?
It was canceled in 2024 and nearly canceled again in 2025 before officials and tourism groups kept it alive. It returned in 2025 under a new name.
8. Who is La’Quetta Small?
She is Marty Small’s wife and the superintendent of Atlantic City’s public school system. She faces separate charges related to the same case as her husband and was scheduled for her own trial in January 2026.
9. What is the role of the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office?
County prosecutor William Reynolds oversaw the criminal cases against Marty Small and La’Quetta Small. After the mayor’s acquittal, Reynolds said the outcome was disappointing but indicated he respected the jury’s decision.
10. What other towns are in Atlantic County besides Atlantic City?
Hammonton, Pleasantville, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township, Mays Landing (the county seat), Absecon, Brigantine, Ventnor, Longport, and Margate, among others. Most people outside the area only know Atlantic City.
11. Where do Atlantic County residents get their local news?
The Press of Atlantic City is the main local paper. DownBeach.com covers beach community news. NJ.com and the New Jersey Globe cover politics. Philadelphia TV stations — Fox29, 6ABC, CBS Philly — provide regular regional coverage.
12. Is Atlantic County politically Democratic or Republican?
Complicated. Atlantic City itself is a Democratic stronghold. The surrounding townships trend Republican or competitive. The county overall leans Republican in most countywide races, which creates persistent tension with the Democratic-run city government.
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