The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), commonly shortened to Teamsters, is one of the nation’s largest private-sector labor unions. Principally representing employees in the trucking, railway, and airline industries, the Teamsters union has more than 1.2 million members. 48
Despite concerns of corruption following Carey, he was elected by the membership in 1991 in a three-way race as an “outsider” candidate. 49 Trade unionists hoped that Carey’s election would invigorate the Teamsters with a left-of-center political vision, and they felt vindication after he brought the Teamsters back into the Democratic fold to support the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992. The Carey regime was also instrumental in replacing centrist AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland with radical Service Employees International Union leader John Sweeney in 1995. 48
Carey was reelected in 1996 by defeating James P. Hoffa, son of the mob-tied Jimmy Hoffa. After his re-election, Carey led a major strike in 1997 against UPS. 48
However, the union was not giving because its political action committee, called “DRIVE,” was broke. (Federal law requires that union campaign contributions to federal candidates be sourced from “separate segregated funds” that are opt-in, not from member dues.) That prompted campaign consultant Martin Davis to try to arrange a mutual assistance pact between the DNC and Carey’s union re-election campaign, by which DNC donors would support Carey in exchange for the Teamsters supporting the DNC. Allegedly with the support of future Virginia Governor and then-DNC official Terry McAuliffe, Davis sought to draw contributions to Carey’s re-election slate “Teamsters for a Corruption-Free Union” from DNC donors, with support promised to the DNC in return. 48
The effort through the DNC failed. Davis embarked on a money laundering scheme through the AFL-CIO and the left-of-center organizing group Citizen Action. Davis directed Teamsters officials to take $150,000 in union treasury money, and send it to the AFL-CIO through then-secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka who would then pass an equivalent sum on to Citizen Action. Citizen Action then spent $100,000 through Davis’s firm, which supported a direct mail campaign in support of Carey’s re-election. Davis, Carey’s campaign manager Jere Nash, and telemarketer Michael Ansara would plead guilty to offenses related to the scheme and turned state’s evidence. 0){
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