Word: teamsters
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...Democrats' devil-may-care pursuit of campaign money, no scheme was bolder than the secret financial alliance between the party and the re-election campaign of Teamster president Ron Carey. The trade-off, as proposed by Carey aides, boiled down to this: the Teamsters would deliver $1 million to the party's state branches around the country, and in exchange the party would tap its donors to provide Carey with $100,000 for his re-election bid. The true purpose: to funnel cash from the Teamster treasury into Carey's campaign, an illegal act that had to be done circuitously...
That doesn't mean Democratic National Committee officials and their Teamster friends didn't try to make it happen. Chicago businessman Mark Thomann, who worked for the D.N.C. as a fund raiser in 1996, has told TIME that he was directed by the party's finance chief to deliver to the Carey team $100,000 from a foreign donor and that he was pressured to follow through by a Teamster lawyer sent his way by D.N.C. officials in Washington. Thomann's story, told to federal prosecutors as well as to Senate investigators, is the most solid evidence yet that party...
Oblivious to these larger machinations, Thomann went about his business and quickly determined that Vasquez was an employer and thus barred from giving to the union campaign. He informed Sullivan that the idea wouldn't fly, but he had a harder time breaking the news to a Teamster lawyer named Nathaniel Charny, who, just as Sullivan had predicted, had tracked Thomann down by phone a few days earlier and pressured him for the money, Thomann says. In the return call, Charny (who declined comment) was upset that the D.N.C. official had given up so easily, and suggested that Vasquez...
...broad outline of the Vasquez gambit was disclosed by federal prosecutors last month when Davis and two other Carey associates pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the complex plan to channel Teamster money into Carey's campaign. So far no Democratic party officials have been charged. In an interview, Sullivan said he never took the Davis deal seriously. He simply asked Thomann to see if the transfer from Vasquez to Carey was "possible," Sullivan said, and dropped the issue after that. What Senate investigators want to know is how far the grand swap extended, which is why Mark Thomann is scheduled...
...least two of the schemes used to raise money for Carey allegedly involved other top labor leaders. In one case, as Teamsters rank and file voted last October in a two-month process monitored by the Federal Government, the Carey campaign urgently needed a cash infusion for a final direct-mail push. Carey aides approached Trumka, asking the AFL-CIO "to help Ron." They were told the federation was short of cash. They suggested funneling $150,000 of Teamster money through the federation--and into Carey coffers. Trumka agreed, according to federal investigators. On Nov. 1, a Teamster check went...