Teamsters President Ron Carey should be "removed and disqualified" from a rerun of the race for the union's top job while investigators probe his campaign fund-raising practices and links between union money and the 1996 election, challenger James P. Hoffa said Sunday.
While never pointing a finger directly at Carey, court-appointed election overseer Barbara Zack Quindel last week refused to certify last December's Teamsters balloting that showed Carey winning re-election. She called for a new contest, but Hoffa claims the fund-raising concerns should bar Carey from running."Carey should step aside - be removed and disqualified from the race because this is a burgeoning scandal and right now he is an illegitimate person in the position of president," Hoffa told "Fox News Sunday." "He has not been elected by the members. The election has been thrown out. His term is over."
Carey has no intention of stepping down, said Teamsters spokesman Matt Witt.
Hoffa said appointing an interim leader would prevent Carey from using the president's post to his advantage.
"We have affidavits where people said `I was paid by the (union) to go out and campaign (for Carey),"' Hoffa said. "That's illegal. If he's there, they're going to do that again."
Witt told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Teamsters' staff members were given strict instructions about election rules: "If anybody was campaigning on union time, they were doing so in direct conflict with instructions they had been given by the union."
Hoffa has suggested a federal court appoint a trustee to run the union while a new presidential campaign is held. Witt said that would take at least five months.
"The union has very important business to conduct over the next six months," Witt said, citing the Teamsters' upcoming battle against efforts to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement, negotiations with freight haulers and enforcement of the union's new contract with United Parcel Service.
"Ron Carey has no intention of leaving it to the government to run the union and carry out those responsibilities," Witt said.
Senate and FBI investigators have been scrutinizing the union's relationship with the Democratic National Committee since a memo signed by Richard Sullivan, the party's former finance chairman, surfaced last month.
In the memo, Sullivan asks Washington political consultant Martin Davis to steer about $1 million in Teamsters donations to several state and local Democratic Party affiliates.
A separate note from Davis to the union's former political director, William Hamilton, linked the donations to unspecified "commitments."
"There's been some allegations with respect to the DNC, although those allegations and those acts have never been carried out," Carey said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I was not aware of this, and as the elections officer (Quindel) clearly put out, that I was not involved."
Witt said Davis was a private consultant hired to do direct mailing for Carey's campaign, but was not an official of either that campaign or the union. No allegations have surfaced that any Teamster official approached the DNC, Witt said.