New Jersey Asked Miss America Home With No Money

New Jersey’s Assembly voted 69-0-3 on Jan. 30, 2025, to urge Miss America back to Atlantic City and put no money in the resolution. The pageant that hotel men built for the week after Labor Day was already in Florida, and it is still there.

Regan Hutsell of Texas took the Miss America 2027 crown on Sept. 6, 2026, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Host-city announcements that May described a three-year stay in West Palm Beach, through 2028.

New Jersey’s Miss America Resolution Carries No Funds

Assembly Resolution 166 is a request, not a contract. Assemblywoman Andrea Katz, a Democrat from District 8 in Atlantic and Burlington counties, introduced it on Oct. 21, 2024, with Assemblywomen Margie Donlon, M.D., of District 11 and Heather Simmons of District 3. The Assembly Tourism, Gaming and the Arts Committee sent it out on Jan. 23, 2025. A week later the full house passed it and filed it with the Secretary of State.

The operative clause urges the pageant to return in 2025 and every year after that. Copies go to the Miss America Organization’s chief executive and to the sitting Miss America. The text never mentions a subsidy, a venue, or a bid.

Abbie Stockard of Alabama had already been crowned Miss America 2025 on Jan. 5 in Orlando, so the 2025 date in the resolution was already gone when the clerk filed it. Katz had worked with Miss New Jersey 2024 Elizabeth Mendel on eating-disorder legislation and argued the women on that stage were doing serious platform work. “We have to bring the pageant back to NJ,” she wrote when the committee moved the measure.

WHAT THE RESOLUTION DOES

• The ask: It tells the Miss America Organization that the Assembly wants the annual competition in Atlantic City starting in 2025.
• The mailing list: The clerk sends the filed text to the organization’s CEO and to the current titleholder.
• The history it cites: It names the 1921 Inter-City Beauty Contest, more than $150 million in scholarships since 1945, and the platform system adopted in 1989.
• The blank line: It authorizes no casino-fund spending and binds no host, network, or city.

That blank line is the whole fight. The last time the crown came home, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority wrote the checks.

Hotels Needed a Reason to Stay Past Labor Day

Atlantic City businessmen staged a Fall Frolic in 1920 because the season died when Labor Day weekend ended. The Businessmen’s League wanted to keep fun and profits continuing past Labor Day, so they added rolling chairs, a bather’s revue, and, in 1921, a newspaper-sponsored beauty contest.

The Inter-City Beauty Contest ran Sept. 7-8, 1921. Papers in the Northeast sent winners; Atlantic City businesses covered travel. The Atlantic City Experience, the city’s heritage collection, lists eight finalists from Northeast cities, with 16-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., taking the Golden Mermaid trophy. About 100,000 people packed the Boardwalk on the morning of Sept. 8, 1921.

The Assembly resolution still leans on that origin story. “The long and storied history of the Miss America Pageant has been inextricably tied to its origins and long-standing relationship with Atlantic City,” the whereas clauses say. It also cites Bette Cooper, the New Jersey woman who won in 1937, and it skips the chapter that actually explains why Trenton is asking again with nothing in its hand.

How Much the Casino Fund Paid Last Time

Miss America left Boardwalk Hall for Las Vegas, then came back in 2013 on CRDA money. A three-year return deal cost the authority $6,801,000. In 2016 the board signed a second three-year pact covering the 2017, 2018, and 2019 competitions for $12,536,000, a jump the New Jersey Office of the State Auditor later described as 80 percent. The two contracts totaled $19,337,000.

The 2016 extension paid $3.5 million, $3.75 million, and $4 million for those three competitions, plus $325,000 a year for meals, hotels, transport, security, and a VIP after-party. For 2018 that package came to $4.325 million. The auditor found the authority could not show it had monitored actual production costs on the first deal and did not commission a fresh impact study before raising the second.

THE CRDA PAGEANT TAB

Those two studies are not the same measurement. The 2013 memo estimated $60.4 million in local jobs, consumer spending, and tax revenue before the return. A later study, done after the 2016 pageant and after the second contract was already signed, put the benefit at $23.2 million and counted television exposure that the first study left out. “The CRDA was unable to provide documentation to support any efforts on their part to monitor the actual costs related to the Miss America Competition,” the audit said.

Matt Doherty, then the authority’s executive director, drew the line in 2019. Boardwalk Hall, he said, was too expensive, and “it cannot be subsidized at the rate it was in the past by the CRDA, which for 2018 was $4.325 million.” AR166 never revisits that number.

Las Vegas, Connecticut, Orlando, Then Palm Beach

The resolution describes a Las Vegas stretch from 2006 to 2013, a return to Atlantic City, and a 2024 move to Orlando. It does not mention Connecticut. The organization announced in July 2019 that Miss America 2020 would be crowned Dec. 19 at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, on NBC. A Connecticut economic-development spokesman said the state put up no incentives. Another casino town took the date Atlantic City no longer wanted to buy.

THE ROAD OUT OF ATLANTIC CITY

1. Sept. 8, 1921: Margaret Gorman wins the Inter-City Beauty Contest on the Boardwalk.
2. 2013: The pageant returns from Las Vegas under the first CRDA contract.
3. 2018: The last Atlantic City competition runs; the state audit lands; CRDA refuses another subsidy at the $4.325 million rate.
4. July 23, 2019: Miss America and NBC name Mohegan Sun for the Dec. 19, 2019, broadcast.
5. 2024: The competition moves to Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center.
6. Jan. 30, 2025: The Assembly files AR166, still aimed at a 2025 return that had already been awarded.
7. May 7, 2026: The Miss America Organization names West Palm Beach for Aug. 28 through Sept. 6, 2026, and host-city materials describe a three-year stay.
8. Sept. 6, 2026: Cassie Donegan of New York crowns Regan Hutsell, the 99th Miss America, in West Palm Beach.

Doherty had said in 2019 that a network deal and a cheaper venue would tell the market whether the competition still had a buyer. Florida answered that question twice, first in Orlando and then on the Palm Beach County calendar.

Florida Booked the Boardwalk’s Old September Week

On May 7, 2026, the Miss America Organization named West Palm Beach as its new host city for a run that commemorated 105 years of the competition. Events sat at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, and the Hilton West Palm Beach. Fifty-two women, one from each state plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, competed that week.

It feels especially meaningful to announce this powerful next step for Miss America. The Palm Beaches represent vision, momentum, and possibility, a place where women’s voices, ambition, and achievement can take center stage.

Robin Fleming, CEO, Miss America Organization, May 7, 2026 host-city announcement

Milton Segarra, president and CEO of Discover The Palm Beaches, called the booking an honor for a destination that sells itself as a resort that can still fill rooms. Fleming said the city had the halls, the restaurants, and the beach access the organization wanted. The official account posted the same release the day of the announcement.

Miss America Announces West Palm Beach as New Host City! Iconic Pageant Lands in The Palm Beaches, “America’s First Resort Destination®” 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 7, 2026 — The Miss America Organization is proud to announce that the upcoming Miss America Competition will take… pic.twitter.com/g2uc7BYumw

— Miss America (@MissAmerica) May 7, 2026

Hutsell, a Houston dancer and former Radio City Rockette, won preliminary talent and fitness awards and took the crown from Donegan on Sept. 6. There is no live argument on that stage about Atlantic City. The current titleholder’s public calendar has been Houston television, a Dallas Cowboys opener, and a dance-studio welcome, all of it radiating from a Florida crowning, not from Boardwalk Hall.

The memory of Miss America still lives on the Boardwalk in old photographs and protest lore, which is why a no-money resolution could clear the Assembly with three abstentions and zero no votes. The week itself sold to a city that bid venues and tourism staff, not whereas clauses.

Miss New Jersey Already Went Home to Ocean City

The state pageant that feeds Miss America made the same move in reverse. Miss New Jersey had sat at Ocean City’s Music Pier for more than 20 years, shifted to Atlantic City in 2019, and came back to the Pier on June 18-20, 2026, with a Boardwalk “Show Us Your Shoes” parade the night before. Thirty-eight women competed. Kylie Gene Wright of Egg Harbor Township, in Atlantic County, won on June 20 and went to West Palm Beach, where she took preliminary fitness and talent awards and watched Hutsell get the national crown.

Egg Harbor Township is a short drive from the halls that used to host the national week. The local winner still had to fly to Florida. Ocean City could host a state pageant and a free parade without a CRDA-scale invoice. Atlantic City is still trying to buy the national brand with a letter from Trenton.

The September Problem Casinos Did Not Solve

The 1921 contest existed because hotels emptied after Labor Day. Legal casinos were supposed to make that calendar irrelevant. They did not erase the shoulder week, and they did not like the price of the old fix. When CRDA stopped paying $4.325 million a year, the pageant left. When the Assembly asked it back, the ask was history and scholarships, not a venue deal.

West Palm Beach holds the dates through 2028. AR166 remains on file in Trenton, still addressed to a 2025 return that never came, still silent on who would pay if anyone in New Jersey tries again.