Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Joe Biden's 1972 Election Victory

Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran was a high-ranking member of the Bufalino crime family, which  was based in Northeastern Pennsylvania, particularly in Lackawanna County and adjacent Luzerne County, more particularly in the cities Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Pittston. 

This area is on the western edge of the Delaware River Watershed. From that area, transportation and economic routes generally go south to Wilmington and Dover, Delaware.

Delaware River Watershed
(click on the image to enlarge it)

Sheeran grew up in the Pennsylvania town of Darby, on the west bank of Delaware River and about 22 miles from Wilmington. In 1955, when he was about 35 years old, Sheeran was working as a truck driver and became associated with Russell Bufalino, who had been involved in the Mafia since the 1920s. 

Frank Sheeran

In 1955, Bufalino introduced Sheeran to Jimmy Hoffa, the leader of the Teamsters Labor Union, which organized primarily truck drivers. 

Russell Bufalino

Hoffa soon began to employ Sheeran informally as an enforcer who threatened and even murdered Hoffa's rivals in the labor-union movement. During his own 83-year-long life, Sheeran murdered more than two dozen people, including Hoffa. Probably most of the murders were done on Bufalinos' orders. 

Frank Sheeran and Jimmy Hoffa

Due largely to Bufalino's and Hoffa's support, Sheeran rose gradually through the ranks of Teamster's Local 107, which was headquartered in Philadelphia but included Wilmington. Eventually, Wilmington got its own Teamsters Local -- Local 326 -- and Sheeran became that Locals' president.  

In 1966, Hoffa appointed Sheeran to head Teamsters Local 326, headquartered in Wilmington. Sheeran has described his Wilmington appointment as follows:

About a year before [March 1967], Jimmy [Hoffa] split [Teamsters Local] 107 into three locals, figuring it would cut down on the violence that way. He gave me the charter for a new local in Wilmington, Delaware, Local 326. I became acting president of Local 326 until an election could be held and I could be voted in by rank and file of that local. 

The first thing Jimmy wanted me to do was go up to Philly and fire these five disruptive organizers that the [Local] 107 president, Mike Hession, was afraid to fire. I drove up I-95 and fired Johnny Sullivan, who was with [Joey] McGreal and was out on his appeal on the [John] Gorey thing. I fired Stevie Bouras, who only got his job because he fired a gun into the ceiling and scared Hession. I fired another guy, but I don't remember his name. .... I fired Big Bobby Marino and Benny Bedachio. ....

After I fired them all, I stayed in Philly awhile to make sure there was no backlash. Then I went back down to Delaware, which is about thirty miles south. I was learning my new position [Acting President of Local 326]. I wanted to justify Jimmy's faith in me by giving me the charter. (Note 1)

In September 1967, an anti-Hoffa faction led by McGreal tried to take care over Local 107. Sheeran organized a violent attack on the anti-Hoffa faction.

I [Sheeran] called [Philadelphia's Mafia boss] Angelo Bruno and borrowed some Italian muscle. I had Joseph "Chickie" Ciancaglini and Rocco Turra and a few others. We had the good muscle. I had men inside the [Teamsters union] hall looking out the windows and men on the street. I had my back to the union hall.  

Two groups were walking toward each other from opposite ends of Spring Garden Street, the McGreal people coming from one direction and the [pro-Hoffa] people loyal to the [Teamsters] local coming from the other direction. 

All of a sudden, shooting broke out. The first shot came from behind me and went whizzing past my head. They say I gave the signal for the shooting to begin. They said I pointed a finger at DeGeorge and someone from my side shot him. ....

I drove down to Newport, Delaware, to hide out in an apartment over a bar until things died own. I called Fitz [Frank Fitzsimmons, the Teamsters President while Hoffa was in prison] and said to him, "One down. Two limping" [one McGreal supporter killed and two wounded], and Fitz panicked and hung up the phone on me. ....

The D.A.'s office put out an arrest warrant on me. They arrested Chickie, a black guy named Johnny West, and Black Pat, a white guy. I stayed in Delaware for a while, but I didn't want a flight charge on me too. So I got Bill Elliot, who had been a big shot on the Wilmington Police Department, to drive me to Philly. .... 

It cost me my union election at Local 326 in Wilmington. I couldn't campaign because I was sitting in jail. I still only lost by a few votes. Finally, the judge let me sign my own bail and I got out. ....

Those charges against me lingered in the system from 1967 to 1972. Finally, they took me to court to pick a jury and begin the trial. .... Before we picked a jury, the judge put me on the stand and asked me how many times the Commonwealth asked for a postponement of the trial, and I told him "sixty-eight". Then the judge asked m how many times I asked for a continuance, and I said "none", and he [the judge] called it a disgrace .... [Note 2]

The judge then dismissed the charges against Sheeran. While Sheeran had been waiting for the trial -- during 1967-1972 -- he worked as a Teamsters "business agent", which meant that he union members' grievances against the trucking companies. Now that the charges against him were dropped in 1972, however, he could campaign again in the next election for the President of Local 326 in Wilmington.

At about the end of 1967, Wilmington's Local 326 already had declared him to be the Local's "Honorary President for Life". In the following years, Sheeran indeed acted as if he actually were the Local's President. 

When I was incarcerated, the local made me Honorary President for Life. They [Wilmington's Teamsters] didn't have to like me, but they did respect me and they respected the job I did for them. 

I got them their own charter through Jimmy. Before that, they were run by Philadelphia. In 1979 I got them a new building that is their headquarters to this day. I took care of them day-to-day on their grievances and the enforcement of their contracts. We had over 3,000 members when I went to jail [in 1967]. .... [Note 3]

On April 7, 1972, Sheeran murdered "Crazy Joe" Gallo, a rival mobster, in a Manhattan restaurant. Sheeran murdered Gallo because Gallo had disrespected Bufalino earlier that evening. 

That was Sheeran's situation in late 1972 when Joe Biden was campaigning for his first time to become Delaware's US Senator. Sheeran tells his own involvement in Biden's election to the US Senate as follows:

Toward the end of 1972, I got a visit .... from a very prominent lawyer I new who was very big in the Democratic Party. He wanted to talk to me about the upcoming 1972 race for the United States Senate.

Earlier in the year, the incumbent, United States Senator Caleb Boggs, had stopped by and asked to allow him to speak to the [Local 326] membership. I told Boggs that he was too much against labor. He denied that he was against labor. He was a Republican, and he said that since the Teamsters were supporting Nixon for re-election [since Nixon had released Hoffa from prison], he ought to be given a shot to speak to the rank and file. ..... I took it to the [Local 326] executive board, and we decided not to invite him. 

When his opponent Joe Biden asked if he could speak to the membership, I took it to the executive board and got their feelings about it, and nobody opposed it, so I said sure. Biden was on the County Council, and he was a Democrat, and the County Council had some very good people on it for labor. 

Joe Biden was a young kid compared to Boggs. He came and gave his spiel, and he turned out to be a very good talker. He gave a really good pro-labor speech to the rank and file at the membership meeting. He took questions from the floor and handled himself like somebody many years older. He said his door would always be open to the Teamsters. 

So, when this prominent lawyer I knew stopped by my office a little before Election Day, I was already in Biden's corner. The lawyer had another guy with him who worked inside the Morning News and the Evening Journal. They were two papers that were put out by the same company. They were basically the same paper, and they were the only daily newspapers in Wilmington. .... At that time ... nearly every newspaper buyer in the state [Delaware] read the Wilmington newspaper. 

The lawyer explained to me that Senator Boggs had put together some ads that were going to run in an advertising insert in the paper every day for the last week before the election. Boggs was claiming that Joe Biden had distorted Boggs's voting record, and the ads were going to show what Biden had said about Boggs, alongside of Boggs's actual voting record ....

The guy who was there who worked on the paper said that he wanted to run an informational picket line, but he didn't have any good people that worked with him in the newspaper he could trust to walk the line. ... 

I told him I would hire some people and put them on the picket line for him. They were people nobody would mess with. 

The idea behind an informational picket line is that you're trying to organize the company, or ou're claiming that the company is unfair and won't sit down and negotiate with the union, opr that the company is putting pressure on the workers not to sign union cards. ....

I told my friend the lawyer and the guy he had with him that they could count on me to get it handled. I always had a lot of respect for that lawyer, and I thought Biden was better for labor anyway. I told him that once we put up the picket line, I would see to it that no truck driver crossed that picket line. The Teamsters would honor the informational picket line of the other [newspaper company's] union ....

The line went up, and the newspapers were printed, but they stayed in the warehouse and they never were delivered. ....

The newspaper company called me up and .... asked me if I had anything to do with the blowing up of a railroad car that had material that was going to be used in the printing of the newspaper -- whether it was paper or ink or some kind of other supplies, I don't know. But no people got hurt in the bombing. I told him we're honoring the picket line, and if he wanted to hire some guards to keep an eye on his railroad cars, he should look in the Yellow pages.

The day after the election, the information picket line came down, and the newspaper went back to normal, and Delaware had a new United States Senator. ...

There have been things written about this incident, and I am always mentioned in them. They say that this maneuver is what got Senator Joe Biden elected. Especially the Republicans say that if those newspaper inserts from the Boggs side got delivered inside the newspapers, it would have made Joe Biden look very bad. The Boggs ads, coming as they almost did that last week, there would have been no time for Biden to repair the damage. 

I have no way of knowing if Joe Biden knew if that picket-line thing was done on purpose on his behalf. If he did know, he never let on to me. (Note 4)  

On Bufalino's orders, Sheeran murdered Hoffa on July 30, 1975. Bufalino ordered the murder because Hoffa, having been released from prison, intended to campaign again for election as the Teamsters President. The FBI soon figured out that Sheeran was the murderer, but never was able to prosecute him for the crime. However, Sheeran eventually was prosecuted on other charges, for which he was imprisoned  from 1980 to 1995. In his final years (he died in December 2003), Sheeran told his life story to Charles Brandt, who published it as a book in 2004. 

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Note 1: Charles Brandt, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (Hanover, NH, 2016), pages 188-189.

 Note 2: Ibid, pages 190-192.

Note 3: Ibid, pages 222-223.

Note 4: Ibid, pages 223-225