James P. Hoffa more than $750,000 in union assets had been used in Carey's 1996 reelection campaign. During the 1998 election Tom Leedham, then-director of the Teamsters Warehouse Division, campaigned against James P. Hoffa. Campaigning to unite the union, Hoffa won the election. After having lost narrowly in 1996 to Ron Carey, Hoffa's new role as president was considered by Teamster members as a chance to rebuild the union. Hoffa was re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 to five-year terms. "The first big test of the Hoffa administration" was the ratification in June 1999, of a four-year contract covering 13,000 carhaul members
Jimmy Hoffa or imprisoned for virtually all of the 1960s. Hoffa was re-elected, without opposition, to a third five-year term as president of the IBT, despite having been convicted of jury tampering and mail fraud in court verdicts that were stayed pending review on appeal. Delegates in Miami Beach also elected Frank Fitzsimmons as first vice-president, to become president "if Hoffa has to serve a jail term". Hoffa had first faced major criminal investigations in 1957, as a result of the McClellan Senate hearings. He avoided conviction for several years. However, when John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he appointed