At the Celebration of the Life & Work of Ron Carey, Retired Newsday Reporter Ken Crowe praised  Carey as a “great labor leader” and shredded the fabrications against him that brought an end to Ron’s career as the most visionary president in the history of our International Union and of Local 804.

A video of Crowe’s speech will be available soon. Local 804 Members United brings you the text here….

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We come here today to celebrate Ron Carey, a remarkable union leader, whose climb to greatness was ambushed in 1997 by the failure or the unwillingness of FBI investigators, federal prosecutors, the election officers and the members of the Independent Review Board to see through the bold-faced lies of Jere Nash.

As strange as it seems, the best way of explaining what happened to Carey is to recall the old Russian folk tale of a howling pack of wolves pursuing a frightened man driving a horse-drawn sled, called a droshky. Whenever the wolves got too close the driver tossed a baby off the back of the droshky.

We all make mistakes. Ron Carey’s great mistake was to hire Jere Nash as his campaign manager for the 1996 Election.

There WAS a swap scheme in which $885,000 in Teamster money was given to progressive political organizations in exchange for $221,000 in donations back to Carey’s election campaign.
Most if not all of the $221,000 went to the November Group to cover the cost of Carey campaign mailings.

Carey was paying Nash $2,500 a month. Unbeknownst to Carey, the November Group was paying Nash $18,000 a month and at the end of the campaign handed him a $50,000 bonus.

From the outset, Carey swore he knew nothing about the swap scheme. And try as they might, federal investigators couldn’t find any evidence to prove he did. But they nailed Nash. He pleaded guilty to his involvement.

Facing ten years in prison, Nash threw Carey off the back of the droshky.

In yet another swap deal, Nash agreed to become a prosecution witness in return for a suspended sentence.

As a result of Nash’s testimony, Carey was blocked by the Election Officer from being a candidate in the rerun of the 1996 election; he was expelled from the Teamsters by Independent Review Board; and he was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven perjury charges.

But Carey did tell the truth and his lawyers began the process of proving it. First at an IRB hearing, they drew the startling admission from Nash that Carey’s supposed approval of the scheme came during a 15-second telephone conversation.

At Carey’s perjury trial, his defense team proved through phone records and expense accounts that the notorious 15-second phone call never took place.

The defense team came up with more expense accounts showing that Nash double billed the November Group and the Carey campaign for six airfares and dozens and dozens and dozens of taxi rides.

“Not only is he a thief, but a petty thief,” Carey’s lawyer Reid Weingarten told the jurors at the perjury trial.

Even Prosecutor Deborah Landis said in her pitch to the jury: “They turned up some pretty good stuff to show Jere Nash was a liar.” Having said that however she had the GALL to urge the jurors to convict Carey anyhow.

They didn’t.

Carey was EXONERATED, saved from lasting disgrace by a defense team that had exposed Jere Nash’s lies.

Carey’s reputation was intact even though he remained banned from Teamster membership.

Another of his defense lawyers, Mark Hulkower summed up the courtroom victory with the observation that this was “A Greek tragedy with a happy ending.”

Let me end by saying I wonder how often those FBI agents, those prosecutors, those election officers, those IRB members and the driver of the droshky awake in the middle of the night pierced by feelings of shame at what they did to Ron Carey, who deserves to be remembered as a great labor leader.

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