Strong-Arming by Carey Camp Told

Supporters of Teamsters Union President Ron Carey physically assaulted their political opponents and pressured others to give monthly donations to his reelection campaign last year, witnesses told a House subcommittee Tuesday.

Citing what they said were personal experiences, five union members said strong-arm tactics helped assure Carey’s narrow victory over challenger James P. Hoffa in an election that has been overturned by a federal supervisor.

Their charges represented the first public testimony alleging that unlawful conduct occurred in the Carey campaign, other than an alleged financial scheme to swap donations with Democrats that is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York.

Carey has denied wrongdoing, although three associates have pleaded guilty in the donation scheme.

In Tuesday’s developments, a leading Democrat on the House subcommittee said that the Republican majority unfairly featured anti-Carey witnesses when both sides in the union election had practiced intimidation.

Rep. Patsy T. Mink (D-Hawaii) said that “hundreds of allegations” of campaign abuses were filed by both sides with a court-appointed monitor who oversaw December’s vote.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Education and Workforce subcommittee on investigations, said his hearing was aimed at showing that members of a once-corrupt union “continue to suffer injustices” while the election monitor, Barbara Zack Quindel, seems “bent on rushing a rerun election at taxpayer expense” that could cost more than $7 million.

Testifying that he was physically assaulted, Dane Passo, a Chicago Teamster, said he was distributing Hoffa leaflets at a union hall in February 1996 when a pro-Carey officer “ordered me to leave the hall.”

“I told him that election rules permitted me to be there, but he struck me in the head and kneed me in the groin, knocking me down four stairs to the ground floor,” Passo testified. Others kicked him as he lay on the floor, he testified.

Two other union members, Vince Hickman of Aliquippa, Pa., and Barb Dusina of Tampa, Fla., said they were pressured to give monthly contributions to the Carey campaign, contrary to election rules.

Dusina, an organizer for the union, said: “I was required to contribute $50 per month for nine months.” She added: “There was an unspoken message that if any staff person did not contribute, they would be unemployed after a Carey victory.”

Teamster Bob Kruezer of Florissant, Mo., offered a similar complaint.

“I was told it would be in my best interest to give a donation to Ron Carey’s reelection campaign or buy raffle tickets,” Kruezer said.

Wesley Coleman, a Teamster from Beaumont, Texas, said he was forced into campaign duty for Carey--on threat of losing his job. Coleman testified that an “entire organizing staff of six to eight people was doing nothing but campaigning for President Carey” while being paid from the union treasury.

However, Thomas Geoghegan, a lawyer and longtime Teamster reformer, told the subcommittee that since 1991 Carey has brought “an enormous change for the good” in the operation of the Teamsters.

“In the old days, they assaulted their critics on the union floor,” he said. “And they beat people up and killed them. Now people go to an election officer with their complaints.”