Hoffa faces two challengers for IBT president

It’s now official.  Two rival candidates will be on the ballot to oppose Jimmy Hoffa for president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the coming union election. Sandy Pope and Fred Gegare were both formally nominated by receiving support from more than 5% of the delegates who signified their choice by secret ballot at the July international union convention.  

 

Contested elections for top union office are nothing new in the Teamsters. For decades the union had been in the tight grip of organized crime. But beginning in 1991, after a Federal monitorship had been imposed on the union, and the membership given the right to direct elections -- one member, one vote -- and its elections conducted by court-appointed officers, every international election has been hotly contested.  So it was in 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006 and now in 2011. 

 

In all this time, democracy has been kept alive and well by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the reform caucus that campaigned for many years as a lonely voice against corruption and then provided the rank-and-file troops for Ron Carey’'s spectacular victory in 1991. With its rights protected by Federal law and by the court-appointed officers, TDU remained the organized reform force that could sustain an effective insurgent challenge for international office. And so it remains in this election. Sandy Pope is the candidate backed by TDU, and she campaigns in the reform spirit, emphasizing the need to activate and inspire the grassroots membership as a militant force in the defense of union standards.

 

Pope runs without a supporting slate as a single candidate for president. She is president of Local 805, representing some 1,700 members in New York. While she was endorsed by only 9% of the 1,700 convention delegates, that figure hardly indicates the real level of her potential support. To become an “accredited” candidate entitled to campaigning space in the union magazine she filed petitions with 50,000 signatures. In 2006 when she was nominated for general secretary treasurer by only 6% of the delegates, she got 36% of the membership vote.

 

The candidacy of Fred Gegare is something new in this election. Unlike Pope who has a long record as a reformer, up to now he had been a loyal part of the Hoffa administration. As an international vice president under Hoffa, he was a member of the international executive board.  In breaking with Hoffa and ridiculing him as an ineffective leader, Gegare reflects the resentment of sections of the incumbent officialdom who feel that Hoffa disrespects them and has betrayed them by not standing up forcefully against the court-appointed Independent Review Board. That resentment was openly expressed by Tom Keegel who, as general secretary treasurer, occupied the second highest post in the union, and had been Hoffa's personal spokesman. Keegel dropped off the Hoffa slate, refused to run for reelection, and retired -- and not quietly. In an open letter to Teamster leaders, he excoriated Hoffa and his record. 

 

Before the convention, Gegare failed to submit enough signatures on petitions to win candidate campaigning rights. But unlike Pope who runs alone, he is backed by an extensive slate of local officers for twenty international posts, including general secretary treasurer. His campaign has an ambiguous quality. On the one hand, he chides Hoffa for sabotaging Ed Stier's RISE project for a union self-enforced program against corruption and organized crime. On the other hand, he has filed suit in Federal court, a suit endorsed by 50 members and officers of  six locals, asking the judge to void the 1988 consent decree and to end the Independent Review Board which has actually made it possible to free the union of organized crime domination and get rid of corrupt officials. Unlike Pope whose insurgency points to the future, Gregare's insurgency seems to look to the past, to the good old days before government monitors. 

 

But the kneejerk supporters of the Hoffa machine can'’t tolerate any insurgency, especially one that splits off from within. They went wild. With twenty candidates, the Gegare slate was entitled to twenty nominating speeches. In a letter to Judge Loretta Preska, Pete Camarata wrote, “Hoffa delegates on the convention floor and supporters in the guest area were out of control, screaming and yelling when opposition candidates tried to speak. It was impossible to hear the opposition nominators or seconds or hear the candidates accept their nominations.” Richard Mark, the court-appointed election supervisor who chaired the session, failed to keep order. When, according to one eye witness, a delegate nominating one Gegare candidate said he would wait for order because, in the bedlam, no one could hear him, Mark commented, "“I can hear you!”"

 

International officers will be elected by direct membership vote. Ballots will be mailed on October 6; the count begins on November 14.