Stumping Grounds

Strolling around the vegetable crates and stalls at the downtown Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, Teamsters presidential hopeful James P. Hoffa pumped the hands of union workers and repeated his latest election theme like a mantra.

The campaign organization of current Teamsters President Ron Carey, Hoffa charged over and over, “stole $1.5 million of your money. We’ve got to clean that up.”

Hoffa, 56, son of the late Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, was zeroing in on the broad scandal that already has led three former Carey campaign figures to plead guilty to federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

He’s counting on it as his weapon either to defeat Carey or, preferably, eliminate him from this winter’s Teamsters rerun election. A federal election official, in fact, is expected to rule any day on whether Carey should be disqualified because of his possible involvement. Whatever that decision is, the brouhaha is proving a boon to Hoffa, who has spent much of the last two years on the defensive about his own controversial past associations.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are looking into whether top AFL-CIO officials, the Democratic National Committee and liberal activist groups also broke the law in connection with the scheme. The outcome could have major ramifications for the nation’s labor movement, which has been struggling to rebound, and its political allies.

The three former aides--including the campaign manager for Carey’s since-voided 1996 election victory over James Hoffa--admitted to a complex scheme to illegally funnel funds from the Teamster treasury to the Carey campaign.

Carey has said he had no knowledge of the scheme and was betrayed by his aides. A spokesman for his campaign said Wednesday that the amount of money diverted from the union was far lower than the $1.5 million asserted by Hoffa.

In any case, if Carey is barred from running again, Hoffa is expected to breeze to victory, no matter what other late candidate may emerge for the leadership of the nation’s biggest private-sector union.

But if the beginning of Hoffa’s four-day visit to Southern California is any gauge, the former linebacker at Michigan State University isn’t taking anything for granted. Over a hasty breakfast of pancakes and bacon, in a brief break between meetings with workers in Los Angeles and Orange County, Hoffa said, “We’re going to be campaigning no matter what happens.”

Hoffa’s campaign day began shortly after 6 a.m., with a 45-minute visit to the bustling downtown Los Angeles produce market. Among the workers, Hoffa hammered away at the Carey campaign finance scandal and urged them to vote in the rerun election, which will take place from mid-February through mid-March.

Although some workers beamed as they chatted with Hoffa, many appeared baffled by the attention, and said later that they were unsure of whom they supported. All told, though, the sentiment appeared to tilt heavily toward Hoffa.

“I’ll probably vote for him,” said Rick Dietzel, a salesman at the market and a Teamster for nine years. “With me, it’s not that I think he’s Snow White or the best guy in town, but I’m not pleased with the way things have been.”

Alluding to the four years that the elder Hoffa spent in prison in connection with union corruption, he added, “I would hope the son is better than I think the father was.”

But Jim Santangelo, head of a Teamsters local in El Monte and a candidate for one of the union’s three western region vice president posts on the Hoffa ticket, said the Hoffa name is “magic” among most workers. He said Carey, meanwhile, has been tarnished by the campaign finance scheme.

“You don’t see people wearing Carey T-shirts any more, not at our union meetings,” he said.

The memory of Hoffa’s father, who mysteriously disappeared in 1975 and was presumed murdered by the mob while attempting a comeback bid for Teamsters president, is never far away. When the younger Hoffa was briefly separated from his entourage at the produce market and couldn’t be located, Santangelo quipped, “We can’t find Hoffa--the son, I mean.”

Meanwhile, at a Washington news conference, Hoffa campaign manager Tom Pazzi issued a statement that Carey “must be disqualified from the rerun election and removed from office. Any decision which stops short of disqualification will be proof of what we and numerous independent observers have been saying for the past two years--that the government wants Ron Carey to stay in power and is willing to go to any length, including covering up the biggest political scandal of the last 10 years, to accomplish that result.”

Carey spokesman John Bell replied that the suggestion of a cover-up “lies somewhere between the laughable and the pathetic.”

The Carey campaign’s difficulties have an ironic twist. Carey was elected to his first five-year term in 1991 on a pledge to clean up the corruption-riddled union. He followed up on that promise by joining with government officials to remove or sanction 390 allegedly corrupt local officials--an accomplishment that many Carey backers and outside observers say should overshadow the campaign finance controversy.

Carey ran for a second term last year and, in December, defeated Hoffa by a 52%-to-48% margin, largely by tarring Hoffa as someone who would return the union to its old corrupt ways. Then, while directing the Teamsters’ two-week strike against United Parcel Service of America in August, Carey appeared firmly in charge.

Shortly afterward, however, Carey’s election victory was declared invalid because of the campaign finance scandal. That, in turn, has given a boost to Hoffa’s effort to portray himself as the true corruption-busting reformer. Some observers say the Carey campaign scandal also has turned Hoffa into the election favorite even if Carey remains eligible to run.

Recently, the Carey camp has alleged that Hoffa’s campaign received contributions from a Chicago mob associate and illegal kickbacks from an insurance firm. That comes on top of criticism of Hoffa for serving as a labor lawyer for allegedly corrupt union locals and for doing business years ago with the late Allen Dorfman, a reputed mob associate who mishandled Teamster pension funds.

Hoffa brushed aside the charges as Carey “propaganda,” and added that “Dorfman has been dead for more than 20 years.” He also said that he knows of no government investigation that has been launched into his campaign or personal activities.

Compare that, he said, to the spot Carey is in as he awaits word on whether he will be allowed to run for the Teamsters presidency again. The Carey campaign finance scheme, he said, “brought the criminal element into this union.”