As telephone calls poured in Friday, Dane Passo’s already high enthusiasm for Jimmy Hoffa got pumped even higher.
“The people are definitely, definitely seeing the lights now,” gushed Passo, a truck driver and Midwest campaign manager in Berwyn for Hoffa’s long-term campaign to head the embattled Teamsters union.
To Passo and other Hoffa supporters, their man got a hefty boost Thursday when the federally appointed official overseeing the union’s election said she had new information that might lead the government to bar union President Ron Carey from competing in a new election.
Hoffa, son of the late Teamster boss, barely lost to Carey last December in the federally run election. But last month, Barbara Zack Quindel, the Milwaukee labor lawyer overseeing the election, tossed out the results, saying they were tainted by allegations of illegal fundraising by Carey’s campaign.
Quindel’s public acknowledgement to Carey that she would be reviewing new information that could bar him was hardly welcomed by Carey’s supporters, who were kicking off re-election efforts Thursday.
“The timing of her letter was unfortunate, but we are plowing right ahead,” said John Bell, Carey’s campaign director in Washington, D.C. “What she hears will not remotely suggest that Carey will be disqualified.”
In the coming days, Bell said, Quindel is expected to talk with Martin Davis, a consultant for the Carey campaign, and Jere Nash, who ran the campaign. In her letter to Carey, Quindel said she would be talking to people who had not cooperated previously.
Davis has been charged by federal prosecutors with mail fraud in connection with the campaign. Nash was dropped from the campaign payroll this past spring when he refused to cooperate with union officials probing the election effort.
Quindel also said she will be reviewing information provided by an unnamed source.
The impact of the new information may be revealed at a hearing Wednesday in New York.
John McCormick, president of Local 705 in Chicago and a Carey backer, said he doubts that any new information about the campaign will hurt his candidate.
The information Quindel will be considering “has already been there,” he said, confidently.
