Jimmy Hoffa is elected Teamsters president

Jimmy Hoffa is elected Teamsters president in 1957, despite facing indictments and public charges of corruption. The election marks a decisive expansion of his authority: the union’s delegates chose him for his first term as president, and he soon used that power to reward allies. In the book’s wider account, the episode also sits at the beginning of a longer entanglement between union leadership, Hoffa’s personal loyalties, and organized-crime networks that later surfaced in the investigation of his disappearance.

Election amid indictments

At the time of the election, Hoffa faced two federal indictments. One concerned the illegal wiretapping and bugging of Teamsters offices, intended to determine whether union officers were passing information to the McClellan Committee; the other charged him with perjury over his testimony about the bugging. In September 1957, the AFL-CIO Ethics Committee charged that Dave Beck and Hoffa had used “their official union positions for personal profit.” It also accused Hoffa of having “associated with, sponsored, and promoted the interests of notorious labor racketeers.”

The Teamsters’ response was to elect Hoffa while the charges were pending in two federal jurisdictions. The contrast is central to the episode: the allegations did not prevent his ascent within the union. Instead, the election gave him the presidency at a moment when his opponents were publicly challenging both his conduct and his ties.

Convention rules and acceptance speech

The presidency was not decided by a direct vote of the rank and file. Under the tightly controlled system described in the book, handpicked delegates elected the president at an International Convention held every five years. The ballots were not secret. The procedure made the convention delegates—not the general membership—the immediate arbiters of the union’s leadership, and Hoffa won his first term through that structure.

In his acceptance speech, Hoffa said, “Let us bury our differences.” The book sets the conciliatory phrase against the conflict surrounding his election and the accusations that accompanied it. It does not resolve the tension: the call for unity comes from a leader facing federal prosecution and charges that he had promoted racketeering interests.

Power and the advancement of allies

Hoffa’s new office gave him greater reach over appointments and union influence. In 1957, Tony Provenzano was a staunch Hoffa ally and president of Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, New Jersey. Hoffa named him president of New Jersey’s Joint Council 73, adding a second union paycheck and authority over a council with one hundred thousand members.

The relationship deepened despite outside oversight. In 1959, a Board of Monitors installed by the government ordered Hoffa to purge Provenzano from the union. Hoffa instead made him an International vice president in 1961, giving him another paycheck and still greater power. The sequence shows how the presidency served as a platform for strengthening allies even when monitors sought to limit their influence.

The wider network and later suspicion

The book’s later episodes connect Hoffa’s leadership to personal relationships that extended beyond union offices. In November 1957, Frank Sheeran drove Russell Bufalino to Apalachin, where Bufalino attended a meeting that became a major public exposure of organized crime. Sheeran recalled that he had driven Bufalino to other places for business and described them as friends; he also knew Bufalino’s wife, and Bufalino asked after Sheeran’s children. These details place Hoffa’s close circle within a wider web of travel, introductions, and trust, without making the election itself proof of criminal conduct.

Years later, during the search for Hoffa, a yellow pad beside his telephone bore the penciled words “Russ & Frank.” The book identifies the pair as Bufalino and Sheeran, close friends and staunch allies of Hoffa, and recounts that the family feared only someone trusted could have approached him. After Hoffa disappeared, the FBI listed both men among its initial suspects; its broader list eventually included nine people. Their later scrutiny gives the 1957 election a long shadow: the presidency that consolidated Hoffa’s power became part of a story in which loyalty, access, and the union’s surrounding networks would matter to the unresolved disappearance.