As an eight-year-old child, James P. Hoffa was often lured away and could not join other kids in punting footballs or sledding on icy streets. Instead, he was "on a picket line. I'd be standing by the fire barrel with my dad. He'd explain to me why we were there--that people were on strike for better wages, better lives. That's my heritage."
James Hoffa has spent a lifetime trying to move out of his father's shadow, yet he seems most comfortable within its famous outline. Strolling on a breezy autumn morning with workers amid the trucks, crates and loading docks outside a Detroit produce warehouse, Hoffa exudes a blue-collar bravado that would make Papa proud. A lawyer by training, Jim Jr. has to work hard to appear common, but he's got the stocky carriage, swagger and serious blue eyes that summon up the visage of the Teamster leader who disappeared 22 years ago. Perhaps even more important, as almost daily disclosures of scandal cripple the 1.4 million-member union, Hoffa has a last name that could catapult him to the union's presidency. "My father must be smiling down from heaven today," he says.
The widening fund-raising investigation that threatens to topple current Teamster president Ron Carey has brought Hoffa closer than ever to reviving the family dynasty. Carey has spent time before a federal grand jury investigating an illegal scheme to divert union money to his campaign during his 1996 re-election bid, in which Hoffa was narrowly defeated. And it's far from certain that Carey will even be allowed to participate in the rerun election scheduled to begin in January. Hoffa, meanwhile, is out campaigning, raising money, plugging a reformist platform and decrying what he describes as the "biggest scandal in the history of labor."
There's a lot at stake. To the government, a Hoffa assumption of power would represent the failure of three decades of law enforcement to rid the union of ties to his father's corrupt regime. To the Democratic Party, it could mean the loss of Teamster donations and support. And to Carey and his staff, it would not only mean personal repudiation but also the failure of their promise to rid the union of its past.
The Feds "will never let [Hoffa] take the Teamsters," says a longtime labor investigator: "They will put it into trusteeship first. To the government, it would mean 30 years of effort was all for nothing."
Yet Hoffa has the confidence of the underdog who knows the forces arrayed against him have only enhanced his populist appeal. Sitting down at Pick-a-Deli, a greasy spoon adjacent to the produce warehouse, Hoffa orders his usual: scrambled eggs ("Gimme lots of catsup for my eggs"), orange juice and wheat toast with grape jam. He's annoyed by comparisons with his father ("I have the name, but I'm also someone in my own right"), yet he recalls the patriarch vividly and talks about him at length. "It was draining to go see him" in jail, Hoffa says. "He was like a caged animal. He was such a dynamic person."