Teamsters’ Carey Leading Hoffa in Early Vote for Union President

Ron Carey, trying to win reelection as president of the Teamsters union in the face of a fierce challenge from rival James P. Hoffa, pulled out to an early lead Wednesday in the initial ballot counting.

With official results from 47 of the union’s 562 locals tallied, Carey had 26,877 votes, or nearly 58%. The tally was 19,674, or 42%, for Hoffa, son of the legendary Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, who mysteriously disappeared in 1975.

The figures reflected the results from just over 8% of the roughly 500,000 votes cast in the monthlong balloting by members of the nation’s biggest private-sector union.

Carey supporters were buoyed by the early results, but both sides conceded that it was far too soon to predict a winner, and unofficial figures released late Wednesday night showed the race tightening somewhat. In addition, the Hoffa camp filed an early protest contending that vote-counting rules were being broken by election officials, opening the door to possible irregularities.

The 60-year-old Carey, who portrays himself as a reform leader, has pledged that if he wins, he will continue his efforts to clean up the Teamsters, a union long tainted by corruption. He won his initial term five years ago in the 89-year-old union’s first rank-and-file election for the top leadership.

Hoffa backers say Carey has mismanaged the union and blame him for leaving its treasury nearly depleted. The bitter campaign has been marked by everything from tire slashings reported around the country to a libel suit to charges of dirty tricks involving forged letters allegedly put out by the opposing camps.

Backers of Hoffa, a 55-year-old labor lawyer from Detroit, paved the way for a potential legal challenge of the results after the counting is completed. In their protest, they claimed that, among other things, counters violated election rules by quitting for the night Tuesday without finishing the tally of certain locals they had already started counting.

“This is a heated contest. When the rules are violated, people get upset,” said John Murphy, a Teamsters official from Boston and a member of the Hoffa slate running for one of the four East Region vice presidencies.

But Renee Asher, a spokeswoman for the Carey campaign, fired back that “there are 36 observers on our side and 36 observers on their side, watching the ballots at every single stage. The process is fair and the ballots are secure.”

Observers started providing some unofficial vote counts Wednesday covering more locals than the official numbers. As of late Wednesday, Carey campaign officials said the latest unofficial tally, including ballots from 116 union locals covering 21% of the total vote, showed their candidate holding a 54.6% majority.

Depending on the closeness of the vote, observers said, it could take until this weekend for the vote counters to determine the winner.