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New generation, new allies
By Bill Schneider
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This just in: The Teamsters Union will endorse Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for governor of Maryland. She's a Democrat. They're a union. What makes that the Play of the Week? The Teamsters' endorsement brings back memories of one of the great blood feuds of American history. In the late 1950s, Robert Kennedy was chief counsel to the Senate Labor Rackets Committee -- the committee that hauled in Jimmy Hoffa to testify about union corruption. The two men became bitter enemies. For a decade, Kennedy and Hoffa fought a personal duel. As attorney general in the 1960s, RFK poured resources into his campaign to "get Hoffa." One journalist called it "perhaps the most sustained legal assault against one person our government has ever waged."
Kennedy lived to see Hoffa go to jail in 1967. But Hoffa remained a hero to the Teamsters until the day he got out of jail in 1971 -- pardoned by Richard Nixon. To the Teamsters in those days, Kennedy and the federal government were the enemy. Today, the late Jimmy Hoffa's son presides over the Teamsters: the union that's endorsing Robert Kennedy's daughter for governor and giving her $50,000 -- plus 30,000 potential union supporters in Maryland. What kind of statement are the Teamsters making? "We're at a new generation," says Brett Caldwell, Teamsters spokesman. "You know, Jimmy Hoffa and [Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's] father, Robert Kennedy, had a significant amount of animosity; and this generation of leaders -- in both the Kennedy family and the Hoffa family -- has moved beyond that." The Kennedys and the Hoffas: allies. A coup for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. And the political Play of the Week. The personal battle between RFK and Jimmy Hoffa turned into a prolonged siege between the Teamsters and the federal government. It's still going on. The Teamsters have been subject to government oversight since 1989. But it's not personal anymore.
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