Incumbents Win Election for Control of Teamsters Local

All top incumbent officers were reelected in a hotly contested race for leadership of one of the largest Teamsters locals in Southern California, results announced Wednesday revealed.

Bob Marciel, who has been secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 63 since 1979, got 1,960 votes to 895 for challenger Bob Kirkpatrick, who is a shop steward at Consolidated Freightways.

Six other candidates on the Marciel slate won by similar margins. Marciel called the 72% vote for a new three-year term “a mandate from our members.”

He said the major negotiation facing the union next year will be on behalf of 3,500 workers at Southern California dairies from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

“We put on a clean, honest, fair campaign and conducted an honest election,” Marciel said.

Kirkpatrick, however, said there were “some irregularities” in the election and said he would file an internal union protest. He declined to elaborate.

In 1985, several members of the local who had announced their intention to run against Marciel were assaulted on their way to the nominating meeting. A federal jury in Santa Ana awarded $568,000 to nine members in February after finding the union responsible for the incident.