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11/04/2019
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Miss America 2018, Cara Mund, crowns Miss America 2019, Nia Franklin, at Boardwalk Hall in September 2018. Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
By Amy Kuperinsky | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
After a tumultuous few years for Atlantic City’s Miss America pageant, it’s entirely possible that the event will leave New Jersey once again.
But first, officials in the resort town have confirmed one major departure: The pageant will no longer call Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall home, the Press of Atlantic City reports.
“It’s not going to be in Boardwalk Hall going forward,” Matt Doherty, executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, said on Wednesday. “It doesn’t make sense for it to be there. It’s far too expensive to produce there."
For the majority of its nearly 100-year history, Miss America has been a Boardwalk Hall event. The pageant left Atlantic City for Las Vegas in 2006 and returned to its home venue on the boardwalk in 2013.
The Atlantic City-based Miss America Organization said in a statement that the CRDA is committed to keeping the pageant in Atlantic City. But the pageant organization is still exploring options for a host city for the upcoming 2020 pageant.
"When the MAO Board of Directors has reviewed all of the proposals, MAO will make a public announcement,” organizers said in the statement.
A state audit of the CRDA released in September, just after the 2019 pageant, said the authority failed to monitor costs and contracts relating to the event and did not commission an economic impact study before giving the pageant more money.
In 2018, the state authority committed to giving Miss America $4.3 million.
The 2019 pageant, where Nia Franklin, the former Miss New York, was crowned at Boardwalk Hall in September, was beset by internal strife within the Miss America Organization and among pageant volunteers and former Miss Americas.
Miss America’s unrest started after the pageant installed new leadership in the wake of an email scandal involving the former CEO and other pageant leaders. Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989, who became the new chairwoman of the pageant board of directors, and Regina Hopper, who became Miss America CEO, were accused of misleading board members and volunteers when they did away with the pageant’s swimsuit competition.
Carlson said that pageant contestants — who she called candidates — would no longer be judged on their physical appearance. Carlson and Hopper denied claims that they caused board members to believe that ABC would drop the show unless the swimsuit competition was eliminated.
State pageant directors in New Jersey and other states signed a letter calling for the removal of Carlson and Hopper and the board over what they claimed was a lack of transparency. Many former Miss Americas joined in the call. After the pageant, a number of state directors were summarily replaced.
The pageant leadership controversy was further complicated when Miss America 2018, Cara Mund, shared a scathing letter that accused Carlson and other Miss America staff of bullying her during her reign. An investigation of Mund’s claims conducted on behalf of the Miss America Organization found the claims to be without merit, but Mund disagreed with how the investigation was conducted, saying it was rushed and that she did not get to share her own experiences.
Miss America began at the boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1921 as a way for local businessmen to extend the summer tourist season past Labor Day.
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