When Ron Carey won the race for Teamsters president in 1991, he rode to power behind dissidents who had risked their jobs, and their lives, to fight mob control of their locals. But even before a federal overseer barred him from running again--the court had already nullified his re-election in August--Carey the reformer had become Carey the co-opted tyrant. Disaffected Teamsters dissidents have told TIME that Carey not only spurned his allies but also surrounded himself with a cadre of 1960s-era campus radicals with little taste for democracy.
Indeed, Carey's alienation of former supporters seriously eroded his popularity, thus making the...