Hoffa, Jr. -- Son Evokes Father's Legendary Past In Bid For Top Teamsters Post

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When you're running for Teamsters president, it doesn't hurt to be named Jimmy Hoffa. Usually.

"Hello, I'm Jim Hoffa," says the son of the famous Teamster leader, campaigning at a union golf outing.

"And I'm Mickey Mouse" is the retort.

After all, everyone knows Jimmy Hoffa disappeared 19 years ago.

But James P. Hoffa - "Jim" to friends and family, "Jimmy Jr." to supporters - soldiers on.

"No, no, I'm the son," he explains. "Different Hoffa."

A different Hoffa? In important ways he isn't, in other ways he is. It's a balancing act - a "fresh face" who would take the union back to better days "when my father ran it."

Some differences are apparent. Hoffa senior was a union official as a teenager. By 50, he had welded truckers into a single mighty bargaining unit that gave the Teamsters veto over the nation's commerce.

Hoffa the younger, now 53, long was content to make a comfortable, anonymous living as a Teamster lawyer. Last year he quit to work as a union staff aide, so he could run for president in 1996. He campaigns nights and weekends.

He draws without apology on his father's name: a second Hoffa presidency, he says, would restore the Teamsters to its glory when the old man was in charge.

Change would seem in order. The union has lost 30 percent membership since 1980, even while trucking has created thousands of new jobs. The strike fund is broke, the general fund nearly so and the government, which sued the Teamsters as a "corrupt and racketeer-influenced" enterprise in 1988, monitors union business.

A state of war exists between president Ron Carey and old-line leaders resisting attempts to centralize power. Carey's recent move to close four of the Teamsters' regional conference offices, including one in Seattle, drew heated protests. Hoffa backs the old-timers.

But is another Hoffa the answer? Summoning Jimmy's ghost forces the union to confront his mixed legacy - fat contracts and unprecedented clout; sweetheart deals with employers and underworld alliances that probably cost him his life.

"It's hard to organize new members," says Nik Wenzel, a Teamster for 29 years. "The gangster reputation is part of it, and the Hoffa name is part of the reputation."

How does Hoffa wrap himself in the useful parts of his father's legacy without getting stained by the rest?

"No one said running was going to be easy," he said. "But I wasn't raised to believe things were supposed to come easily."

Jimmy Hoffa didn't push his boy to take a Teamster job. Not that he opposed nepotism - friends and allies stocked Detroit locals with their fry. But he wanted something better for the lad who inherited his blocky shape - and seemingly little else.

Says Larry Brennan, leader of the Michigan Teamsters and a family friend: "He always needed lawyers and he always wanted people he could trust. What's better for that than having a lawyer who's your son?"

Papa Jimmy was away a lot - "days, weeks, a month at a time," recalls James Phillip Hoffa, who grew up in the Detroit area and lives there today. Ask him what he learned about parenting, Hoffa says: "Spend more time with your kids."

By the time the younger Hoffa reached college, dad had achieved note and notoriety. In 1948 in Tennessee, he formed a trucking company on the side, getting favorable deals from management and hiding ownership by incorporating under his wife's maiden name. The House of Representatives seized on it. Hoffa was indicted, let off by a hung jury, then sent to jail for four years for jury tampering.

The younger Hoffa attended the jury-tampering trial during breaks from the University of Michigan law school, and helped negotiate his father's pardon in 1971. When dad disappeared July 30, 1975, son became the family spokesman.

"I've cried my tears and now it's time to move on," he says. "I'm sure that's how my father would have approached something like that."

Hoffa's take on his dad's disappearance is similar to the FBI's: eliminated by organized-crime interests who feared a Hoffa comeback would cut access to union money. Did he benefit from being Jimmy Hoffa's son?

From 1967 to 1975, Hoffa junior was guaranteed $30,000 annually in Teamster legal work - generous for a man fresh from law school. When papa died, his son got $600,000 of the $1.5 million estate, but has had to work for a living.

He lives in a $221,000 house, has had to scuffle for union business. He earns about $100,000 in a good year working jurisdictional disputes, benefits questions and grievances that wind up in court.

"Not exactly high-profile stuff," he notes.

Why chuck it? Some sort of midlife crisis?

"I see the chance to do some good. My father's legacy is being destroyed. I've got the name, the energy and the inclination to turn things around. I think I can do some good here."

Columbus, Ohio, is Ron Carey country - the Teamster president won 80 percent of the vote in 1991. At Hoffa's first event, a golf outing, the reception is stiff.

"If his name wasn't `Hoffa' would he even be here?" asks Charles Teas, a Carey man.

Across town, at an anti-Carey picnic, Hoffa gets celebrity treatment.

Mingling with 125 people munching hot dogs and drinking beer, Hoffa autographs T-shirts - white "HOFFA" on a field of black. He signs "James P. Hoffa" on one, catches himself. He writes "Jimmy Hoffa" thereafter.

Most are too young to have met Hoffa's father. Those who did seem nostalgic.

"If you're only a smidgen of the man your father was, we're going to be all right," says Walter Koontz, 62.

Hoffa's platform includes creating stringent safeguards against organized crime and getting the government out "and let the Teamsters be a real union again."

Do you condone your father's corruption?

"Corruption, what do you mean by corruption?"

The hidden interest in the shipping company, for instance, though the Senate committee put together volumes of other instances.

"It's an even question as to whether that was illegal, and by the way, he wasn't convicted on it."

Because he tampered with the jury, Jimmy. And was convicted for that.

Hoffa is quiet, then says:

"I don't analyze him. He's gone. He's dead. And whatever he was or wasn't, you have to look at the total leader. He put the Teamsters on the map and made them the largest and most powerful union. That's his legacy. That's how you have to look at things."