James Hoffa to Run for Teamsters Post : Labor: Son of former president announces candidacy in election to be held later this year.

James P. Hoffa, son of the legendary Teamster who disappeared mysteriously 20 years ago, announced Wednesday that he will run for president of the union his father once ran.

Before announcing his candidacy during a taping of the “Larry King Live” show in Los Angeles, the 54-year-old Detroit lawyer said he wants to restore “the greatest union in the world that has been sinking because of a lack of leadership.”

“I was very fortunate to be his son,” he said of his late father, James R. Hoffa. “And I believe that some of his knowledge and charisma have rubbed off on me.”

Hoffa’s campaign kickoff Wednesday included a rally in El Monte and handshakes with other members in Southern California, an important union base that is home to about 135,000 Teamsters.

Jimmy Jr., as the stocky man with his father’s piercing eyes is called in his hometown, is the first Teamster to file candidacy papers for general president of the 1.4-million-member union.

The election for top officers of the union is late next year, and like the last one in 1992, secret mail ballot votes will be counted by federal officials under a settlement agreement that involved charges of union corruption and affiliation with mobsters.

Hoffa’s candidacy promises to stir greater contention in the union’s ranks, especially in Southern California.

Hoffa has already secured the support of Joint Council 42 in Los Angeles, a 90,000-member umbrella group that has long been the union’s West Coast power base. The council, which oversees 20 Teamster locals in the region, is headed by Mike Riley, a fierce opponent of current Teamster President Ron Carey.

Carey, a New Yorker who won his job in an underdog campaign to clean up the union, has the strong backing of Joint Council 92 in Orange, a 35,000-member group that split with Riley’s council last year.

Riley, who was on the ticket that ran against Carey in 1992, said he is supporting Hoffa because the Carey Administration has mismanaged the union’s finances and fostered dissension in the union by eliminating certain organizational structures.

Carey was traveling Wednesday and unavailable for comment, but his aides in Washington, aware of Hoffa’s criticisms of Carey, replied with a two-page summary defending the current Administration’s fiscal management.

Ed Mireles, head of Orange County’s largest Teamster local and a Carey supporter, said: “Ron Carey has a proven record and the rank and file will support him.”

Whether Hoffa, a member of a Detroit-area local, has the support to unseat Carey is unclear. But the value of Hoffa’s name is certain to bring him instant recognition and possibly some votes.

“The name still carries tremendous weight, even though most of the membership today has no direct memory of his father,” said Clete Daniel, a former Teamster member who teaches labor history at Cornell University.

Even so, analysts say, that name value could also backfire if Hoffa is compared to his charismatic father, who federal officials believe was killed by organized crime figures.

Daniel, who interviewed the late Hoffa a few months before his disappearance in mid-1975, questioned whether his son was qualified to run for president. Although the younger Hoffa is much better educated--a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School--Daniel said he does not have the charisma and the rank-and-file roots of his father.

Arthur Sloane, author of the biography “Hoffa,” spoke more favorably, saying the younger Hoffa is energetic, ambitious and intelligent.

But he added: “He’s not James R. Hoffa. Nobody could be. His father was bigger than life, with tremendous strengths and tremendous weaknesses.”

Times staff writer Don Nauss contributed to this story.