OFFICE OF THE ELECTION SUPERVISOR
for the
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS
IN RE: PALMER AND THE )
FEARLESS SLATE ) Protest Decision 2026 113
)
Protestor. ) Issued: July 14, 2026
)
______________________________) OES Case No. P-156-061526 and
OES Case No. P-160-061926
INTRODUCTION
John Palmer (“Palmer”) was a 2026 candidate for General Secretary-Treasurer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (“IBT”) on the Fearless Slate. On June 15, 2026, Palmer filed a pre-election protest against the O’Brien Zuckerman Teamsters United 2026 Slate (“OZ Slate”) and Sean O’Brien (“O’Brien”), current General President of the IBT and recent candidate for General President at the IBT Convention (“P-156”) alleging that the corrective notices required by 2026 ESD 87 and 2026 ESD 110 remained defective as of June 16, 2026.
On June 19, 2026, Palmer filed a “post-election” protest against the same respondents alleging the same or substantially the same factual violations as alleged on June 15 (“P-160”).[1] Accordingly, we consolidated these protests and referred to them herein collectively as the “Protests.”
The IBT Convention was held June 15-18, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. On Tuesday, June 16, 2026, the duly elected and certified delegates to the convention cast their ballots for all contested offices.[2] After the counting of the ballots, no candidate from the Fearless Slate gained at least 5% of the ballots cast by delegates, the threshold for appearing on the ballot for an International IBT election by IBT members. As a result, all candidates from the OZ Slate were deemed duly elected. This included O’Brien as General President and Fred Zuckerman as General Secretary-Treasurer.[3]
Palmer alleges that the remedy ordered in Palmer, 2026 ESD 87 (May 21, 2026) (“2026 ESD 87”) was not enforced in time to allow the Fearless Slate to educate delegates prior to casting their ballots as to the election violations found to have been committed by O’Brien and the OZ Slate related to employer funding of campaign speech favoring the OZ Slate candidates. According to the protestor, this failure to enforce was outcome-determinative of the election.
OES Investigator Joe F. Childers investigated this protest.
BACKGROUND AND TIMELINE
On March 26, 2026, Palmer filed a pre-election protest, P-134-032626 (“P-134”), against O’Brien and the OZ Slate. In P-134, Palmer claimed that O’Brien violated campaign finance rules by discussing the election on various episodes of his weekly podcast, “Better Bad Ideas with Sean O’Brien,” (“BBI Podcast”) which the protestor alleged was funded with employer contributions in violation of the Rules for the 2025-2026 IBT International Union Delegate and Officer Election (the “Rules”). Employers may not contribute “anything of value” to campaigns for International IBT office. Rules, Article XI, Section 1(a). On April 22, 2026, Palmer filed an “amendment” to P-134 in which he identified specific allegations of employer-funded campaign speech to Episodes 55 and 58 of the BBI Podcast. He further provided transcripts of those particular episodes and pinpointed the time stamps where the objectionable speech could be found.
On April 23, 2026, Palmer filed another “amendment” to P-134 in which he sought to further amend his protest to include the latest BBI Podcast episode, No. 65, which aired the day before, April 22, 2026. We treated these “amendments” as new protests and assigned case numbers P-147-042226 (“P-147”) to the allegations concerning Episodes 55 and 58, and P-148-0423026 (“P-148) to the allegations concerning Episode 65 and consolidated them for decision. On May 21, 2026, we issued 2026 ESD 87, the decision on Palmer’s three protests. In our decision, we granted the protest as to BBI Podcast Episode 65, finding that O’Brien engaged in campaign speech and that the episode was funded with employer contributions. While finding that BBI Podcast Episodes 55 and 58 also contained campaign speech and were funded by employer contributions, we denied the protest as to those episodes on timeliness grounds. Among the remedies ordered, we ordered the OZ Slate to post an OES-drafted notice conspicuously on its website and ordered O’Brien to post the same notice conspicuously at the beginning of each episode of the BBI Podcast. We also ordered disgorgement of the employer contribution made to support Episode 65 and removal of the violative campaign speech from BBI Podcast Episodes 55, 58 and 65. Timely disgorgement of the employer contribution was made to OES, the OZ Slate timely placed the notice behind a small hyperlink at the bottom of the homepage of its website, oz2026.com, and the entire BBI Podcast Episodes 55, 58 and 65 were removed from the three podcast platforms where they had been placed by O’Brien.
On May 23, 2026, Palmer appealed 2026 ESD 87 to the Appeals Master, claiming that the remedies ordered in the decision were not stringent enough; however, on the evening before the hearing before the Appeals Master, June 4, 2026, Palmer’s attorneys withdrew the appeal while raising additional claims that the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 were not being enforced.[4] Prior to withdrawal of the appeal, on May 27, 2026, Palmer filed a new protest with the OES alleging that the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 had not been complied with and asked for immediate enforcement. This new protest was assigned protest number P-150-052726 (“P-150”). On June 2, 2026, after discussions with the OES investigator, the Treasurer of the OZ Slate, James Donovan, caused the OES-drafted notice to be removed from the hyperlink “Notices” on the OZ Slate website and placed a hyperlinked image of the notice on the homepage of the website.[5] Palmer complained that after the notice was placed on the homepage, the font of the notice was so small as to be illegible.
On June 11, 2026, the Appeals Master issued her decision on Palmer’s appeal of 2026 ESD 87. She noted that Palmer’s attorneys had withdrawn the appeal but attempted to add new claims that the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 were not complied with and were not being enforced. The Appeals Master found that she did not have jurisdiction over the additional claims concerning the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 and noted that the matter was the subject of a separate protest being investigated by OES. She directed the OES “to complete that investigation promptly.”
The following day, on June 12, 2026, we issued our decision on P-150, Palmer & Fearless Slate, 2026 ESD 110 (June 12, 2026) (“2026 ESD 110”). In our decision, we held that O’Brien had taken no action to comply with the order to place the OES-drafted notice conspicuously at the beginning of each episode of the BBI Podcast. We noted that “[t]he orders of the Election Supervisor must be taken seriously, and we find that this noncompliance (by O’Brien) is willful and disrespects the Office of the Election Supervisor.” We ordered immediate compliance with the notice requirements and fined O’Brien $1,500.00. We also ordered the OZ Slate to enlarge the font of the notice on the homepage of its website to at least size 12. That day, O’Brien’s fine was paid. By June 14, 2026, the OES-drafted notice appeared at the beginning of the BBI Podcast episodes on the YouTube and Spotify platforms,[6] and the font of the OES-drafted notice on the homepage of the OZ Slate website was enlarged to at least 12 point per our order. On the same day, and based on our investigation concerning the above, we deemed the respondents to be in substantial compliance with the remedial orders issued in 2026 ESD 87 and 2026 ESD 110.
The next morning, June 15, 2026, the IBT Convention commenced in Las Vegas, Nevada. On that day, certified delegates nominated candidates for International office. The nominees for the positions of President of Teamsters Canada/Vice President – Teamsters Canada, and Vice Presidents of Teamsters Canada were unopposed and were deemed elected. The OZ Slate nominated a full slate of candidates for the offices of General President, General Secretary-Treasurer, International Trustees, Vice-Presidents at Large, and Vice-Presidents of the Eastern, Central, Southern, and Western Regions of the IBT. The Fearless Slate nominated a full slate of candidates for all offices except the Vice-Presidents, Central Region. The certified delegates voted for the nominated candidates on June 16, 2026. No candidate from the Fearless Slate gained at least 5% of the ballots cast by delegates, the threshold for appearing on the ballot for an International IBT election by IBT members. As a result, all candidates from the OZ Slate were deemed duly elected.
INVESTIGATION AND FINDINGS
Our investigator interviewed the protestor as well as Ed Gleason, counsel for the OZ Slate, and James Donovan, Treasurer of the OZ Slate.
Palmer does not dispute the timeline set forth above. He agreed with the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87; however, his main complaint is that those remedies were not complied with by the respondents or enforced by OES in a timely manner to allow the delegates to the Convention to have a complete picture of the violations by O’Brien and the OZ Slate before they cast their ballots at the Convention. He further argues that the amount of the disgorgement ordered in 2026 ESD 87 should be made public and available to the Fearless Slate members.[7] Palmer acknowledged that he had read the OES decision in 2026 ESD 110 at the time of issuance.
The P-160 protest states:
The Fearless Slate had the right to use the OES finding and the ordered remedy to inform delegates that O’Brien had accepted and used employer-funded campaign support. But without timely disclosure, valuation, proof of disgorgement, proof of removal, and effective corrective notice, the Fearless Slate could not present the complete picture. The failure to enforce the remedy limited the Fearless Slate’s ability to tell delegates not only that a violation had occurred, but how serious it was and whether O’Brien had complied with the order designed to cure it.
When questioned about whether the Fearless Slate copied the OES decisions in 2026 ESD 87 and 2026 ESD 110 to pass out to the certified delegates at the Convention prior to the June 16, 2026, vote, or otherwise made them available to educate the delegates in order to fully inform the delegates of the seriousness of the campaign finance violations of O’Brien and the OZ Slate, Palmer stated that he and his slate members gave “no consideration” to such actions. He further stated that most of the delegates at the Convention would not even talk to him and the Fearless Slate members and supporters. He acknowledged that the Fearless Slate nominees were booed on the Convention floor. Palmer spoke to a “couple” of friendly delegates, but most delegates who supported the Fearless Slate would not admit to supporting the slate and preferred to talk “behind the scenes.” Furthermore, Palmer stated that the Fearless Slate only raised about $30,000 compared to over $2,000,000 raised by the OZ Slate, and therefore could not afford to make copies of the decisions for the approximate 1,570 certified delegates.
Nevertheless, Palmer maintains that the failure to enforce the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 by forcing earlier posting of the OES-drafted notice conspicuously on the OZ Slate website and the BBI Podcast episodes was “outcome determinative” of the delegate vote at the Convention. He maintains that since only a threshold of 5% of delegate votes was necessary to place names on an International election ballot, the failure to timely enforce the 2026 ESD 87 remedies must have been “outcome determinative.” He made no attempt to explain why viewing the OES-drafted notice would have swayed a sufficient number of delegates to the Fearless Slate. Palmer and Richard Hooker, Jr., the Fearless candidate for General President, each obtained fewer than 3% of the votes cast by delegates. Palmer seeks a remedy of a) placing the names of all Fearless Slate nominees on an International Officer ballot to be sent to all IBT members, or b) alternatively, having the certified delegates re-vote for the International Officer nominees through an electronic process similar to how the 2021 Convention ballot count was conducted.[8]
Palmer attempts to liken this case to In Re Cheatem, Post-27-EOH, etc. (August 21, 1997) in which the election officer found that the Carey campaign improperly used employer funds to finance a direct-mail campaign that may have affected the outcome and ordered a re-run of the International Officers’ election.[9]
Ed Gleason, counsel for the OZ Slate, disputes the central tenet of Palmer’s protest. He points out that the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 were complied with prior to the delegates voting at the Convention. BBI Podcast Episodes 55, 58, and 65 were removed from the relevant internet platforms shortly after the decision was issued on May 21, 2026. Likewise, the OZ Slate posted a link to the OES-drafted notice shortly after the decision. Admittedly, O’Brien, over whom the OZ Slate apparently had no control, did not cause the OES-drafted notice to be posted on the BBI Podcast episodes.
However, Gleason maintains that all of the remedies were complied with before the start of the Convention, after we issued 2026 ESD 110, and before the delegates voted. His position is that the Election Supervisor found that the remedies had been complied with as evidenced by an email from our investigator to Gleason on the morning of June 15, 2026. Gleason states that the protestor has failed to produce evidence that the failure to fully comply with the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 earlier was outcome determinative of the delegate election at the Convention. He states that the In Re Cheatem decision from 1997 has no relevance to this case. He urges the Election Supervisor to deny the protest.
On July 1, 2026, Palmer filed a “post-election protest” with the same or substantially the same allegations as P-156 and P-160. Accordingly, we treated the July 1st correspondence as part of the Protests.
ANALYSIS AND LEGAL REASONING
The Protests are considered in the post-election context. A post-election protest “shall only be considered and remedied if the alleged violation may have affected the outcome of the election[.]” Rules, Art. XIII, Section 3(b). The Protests are denied for the reasons set forth here.
I.
The central factual premise of the Protests is that the remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87 were not timely enforced and, therefore, prevented the Fearless Slate from notifying delegates of such violations before the June 16 vote. That premise is not sustained by the record.
All remedies ordered in 2026 ESD 87, as clarified and extended by 2026 ESD 110, with the exception of the posting on the Apple website (discussed below) were fully implemented by June 14, 2026, two days before the delegate vote and one day before the Convention convened. By that date, the OES-drafted notice appeared at the beginning of BBI Podcast episodes on YouTube and Spotify; the notice on the oz2026.com homepage was enlarged to at least 12-point type; O’Brien’s $1,500 fine was paid; and BBI Podcast Episodes 55, 58, and 65 were removed from all platforms (and had been since shortly after the issuance of 2026 ESD 87 on May 21, 2026).
The remedial order required O’Brien to cause the notice to appear “conspicuously” on YouTube, Spotify and Apple for 30 days. However, these websites are not owned and operated by O’Brien and, as such, there are limitations beyond his control as to the postings. Based on our investigation, including, but not limited to, our interview of Gleason and Donovan and review of written correspondence by Apple, we determined that O’Brien substantially complied with the notice requirements as of that date. Accordingly, this office confirmed that substantial compliance had been met by email to respondents’ counsel the morning of June 15. Whatever remedial delay occurred -- and 2026 ESD 110 found O’Brien’s noncompliance with the notice posting requirement to be willful -- it was corrected before a single delegate entered the Convention hall to cast their vote.[10]
Moreover, to the extent that any imperfection in the notice posting persisted through June 16—for example, if the notice appeared less prominently than required or was readily legible only after clicking the smaller font image of the notice or navigating through a secondary link—that issue is ultimately immaterial to the disposition of this protest. As we explain below, the record does not support a finding that any remedial deficiency, whether the delayed posting addressed in 2026 ESD 110 or any arguable imperfection that remained as of June 16, could have affected the outcome of the delegate vote.
II.
Even if some remedial deficiency had persisted to the time of the vote, Palmer’s own admissions at investigation sever any causal connection between the deficiency and the election outcome. When asked whether the Fearless Slate had copied or otherwise made available the publicly issued OES decisions, including 2026 ESD 87 and 2026 ESD 110, to certified delegates, either before or at the Convention, or had otherwise attempted to educate delegates about the violations and the required remedies, Palmer responded that the Fearless Slate gave “no consideration” to any such actions. Palmer had read 2026 ESD 110 at the time of its issuance on June 12, 2026—four days before the delegate vote. Both decisions were publicly posted by this office as of the dates of issuance on May 21st and June 12th on the ibtvote.org website and available to any interested party. Nothing in the Rules, and nothing in the record, prevented the Fearless Slate from using those decisions to inform delegates of the violations and the remedies, including the finding in 2026 ESD 110 that O’Brien’s noncompliance was willful, without resort to the BBI Podcast at all. Having taken no steps to bring the decisions to delegates’ attention, Palmer cannot establish that OES enforcement delays or Respondents’ notice deficiencies, rather than his own failure to act on information that was available and public, were outcome-determinative of the delegate vote.
III.
The “may have affected the outcome” standard requires the complainant to demonstrate a plausible causal connection between the established violation and the election result. A bare assertion that the violation “must have been” outcome-determinative, without supporting evidence or analysis, does not satisfy the standard. Here, the margin of the delegate vote makes any such showing implausible on its face. Palmer and the Fearless candidate for General President each received fewer than 3% of the delegate votes. The threshold for placement on the International officer ballot was 5% of delegate votes. To reach that threshold, Palmer would have needed to increase his delegate support by more than two percentage points (roughly 30 or more additional votes from an electorate of approximately 1,500 delegates) while operating in an environment where the Fearless Slate was booed on the Convention floor, Palmer personally was able to speak with only “a couple” of friendly delegates, most Fearless supporters were unwilling to identify themselves publicly, and the OZ Slate outspent the Fearless Slate by a margin of approximately 65 to 1 ($2,000,000 to $30,000 raised). Palmer offered no analysis, delegate testimony or evidence of any kind to show how earlier or more conspicuous posting of a corrective notice that was, in fact, posted on a website or on podcast episodes would have produced the additional delegate support needed to reach the 5% threshold. The absence of any such showing is not a technical deficiency; it reflects the absence of a causal connection between the violation at issue and the delegate vote outcome.
IV.
Palmer analogizes this case to In Re Cheatem, Post-27-EOH (Aug. 21, 1997), in which the election officer found that approximately $221,000 in employer-funded direct-mail contributions to the Carey campaign may have affected the outcome of the 1996 general membership election for General President and ordered a re-run election. Cheatem is inapposite.
In Cheatem, the violation involved the direct injection of substantial employer funds into a general membership mail ballot campaign. Every eligible IBT member could vote by returning a ballot by mail. The employer-funded contributions financed get-out-the-vote activities specifically designed to increase mail ballot returns among Carey supporters. The causal mechanism was concrete in that more ballots returned equals more Carey votes counted in a race where the margin was close enough that the difference in ballots attributable to the improper contributions plausibly affected the outcome.
The present case differs materially at every point of comparison. The relevant electorate was not the general IBT membership voting by mail, but the approximately 1,570 certified convention delegates who were physically present in Las Vegas, and who voted electronically. Those delegates were not casual listeners who might stumble upon a podcast episode; they were the most politically engaged elected representatives of their local unions, present at the convention because their locals had elected them to be there. The employer-funded campaign speech at issue, the Episode 65 podcast, had been removed from all streaming platforms on or about May 21, 2026, the date 2026 ESD 87 issued, approximately 25 days before the delegate vote. Whatever audience it reached, it was gone before delegates arrived. The violation at issue in these Protests is not the original employer-funded speech; it is a delay in posting or alleged inconspicuous posting of a corrective notice after the speech had already been taken down. The question Palmer cannot answer is how earlier or more conspicuous posting of that corrective notice would have changed the votes of a sufficient number of delegates -- from under 3% to over 5% -- to affect the outcome.
Palmer argues in effect that the modest sponsorship cost for Episode 65 compared to the $221,000 in Cheatem does not diminish the violation’s impact, because a podcast reaches a large audience per dollar expended and may have reached more total listeners than the Cheatem direct-mail campaign. The argument may not be frivolous but it does not carry the analysis. The Cheatem holding did not rest on the absolute dollar amount of the employer contribution; it rested on the demonstrated causal connection between the contribution, the mechanism by which it operated (increasing mail ballot returns in a general membership mail ballot election), and the closeness of the margin. Here, even accepting that a podcast episode reaches a large general audience per dollar spent, Palmer offered no evidence that convention delegates (the relevant electorate, not the general podcast audience) were among that audience in numbers sufficient to affect the outcome. He offered no evidence that any delegate heard BBI Episodes 55, 58, or 65 or was influenced by them, and no evidence that the content of those episodes, rather than the overwhelming structural advantages of the incumbent O’Brien organization, accounted for any delegate’s vote. The per-dollar-reach argument, even if sound as a general proposition, does not establish the causal link between the violation and the delegate vote outcome that the “may have affected the outcome” standard requires.
V.
Palmer requests two specific remedies: equal airtime on the BBI Podcast for the Fearless Slate and an expanded posting order covering all social media outlets used by the podcast. Both are denied.
Equal airtime is not a remedy available in this proceeding. Neither 2026 ESD 87 nor 2026 ESD 110 contemplated or authorized affirmative campaign access as a remedy for a podcast sponsorship violation. The proper remedies for an employer contribution violation are disgorgement, a cease-and-desist order, removal of the offending material, and corrective notice -- all of which were ordered and ultimately enforced in 2026 ESD 87 and 2026 ESD 110. Ordering the respondents to provide the opposing slate with airtime on the BBI Podcast would transform a corrective remedy into an affirmative campaign obligation with no basis in Article XI of the Rules, which addresses employer contributions, or in the prior remedial orders. Moreover, Palmer requested such relief in late in the evening June 15th and the delegate vote began early the following morning.
The expanded social media posting request covering Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and similar platforms suffers from the same infirmities. An order requiring posting on platforms not addressed by the prior remedial orders would be a new and independent remedy untethered from the compliance obligations already adjudicated in 2026 ESD 87 and 2026 ESD 110.
For all of the foregoing reasons, both protests are DENIED.
APPELLATE RIGHTS
Any interested party not satisfied with this determination may request a hearing before the Election Appeals Master within two (2) working days of receipt of this decision. Any party requesting a hearing must comply with the requirements of Article XIII, Section 2(i). All parties are reminded that, absent extraordinary circumstances, no party may rely in any such appeal upon evidence that was not presented to the Office of the Election Supervisor. Requests for a hearing shall be made in writing, shall specify the basis for the appeal, and shall be served upon:
Election Appeals Master
Barbara Jones
Election Appeals Master
IBTappealsmaster@bracewell.com
Copies of the request for hearing must be served upon the parties, as well as upon the Election Supervisor for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Service may be accomplished by email, using the “reply all” function on the email by which the party received this decision. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing.
Timothy S. Hillman
Election Supervisor
cc: Barbara Jones, IBTappealsmaster@bracewell.com
DISTRIBUTION LIST (BY EMAIL UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE):
John Palmer
Richard Hooker
Retu Singla
Seth Goldstein
sgoldstein@workingpeopleslaw.com
Edward M. Gleason, Jr.,
James L. Donovan Jr.
David Suetholz
Will Bloom
Ken Paff
Thomas Kokalas
Timothy S. Hillman
Paul Dever
Joe Childers
Joe Dever
Kelly Hogan
[1] Under the Rules, post-election protests are defined as “[p]rotests concerning election day or post-election day conduct[.]” Rules, Art. XIII, § 3. Although Palmer styled P-160 as a post-election protest, we need not determine whether P-160 independently satisfies the definition of a post-election protest under the Rules. Because P-160 alleges the same or substantially the same conduct and seeks relief arising from the matters raised in P-156, we consolidated the protests for decision. Nothing in this decision should be construed as a determination regarding the proper characterization of similar protests under Article XIII, Section 3, and OES reserves all rights on that issue.
[2] Nominees for office from Teamsters Canada were not opposed and were deemed duly elected after floor nominations on June 15, 2026.
[3] The results of the IBT Convention have not yet been certified as there are outstanding protests.
[4] Despite the withdrawal, the appeal hearing was held on June 4, 2026.
[5] If clicked, the viewer was brought to version with much larger font.
[6] On the morning of June 14, 2026, counsel for the OZ Slate explained in person at a meeting and subsequently in writing to OES that Apple does not have the technology to support the placement of the notice at the beginning of each episode of BBI Podcast. They also showed the OES correspondence from Apple confirming the same.
[7] Palmer waived his argument that the amount of the disgorgement paid should be made public by withdrawing his appeal in 2026 ESD 87.
[8] In 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Convention was held virtually. Delegates convened in various locations throughout the country safely and cast their ballots electronically in an election supervised by OES.
[9] No rerun was ordered for Vice Presidents of the Central Region or Teamsters Canada.
[10] We also note that the Election Supervisor’s decision are publicly available and posted on the ibtvote.org website and that these decisions discuss, in great detail, the factual findings including O’Brien and the OZ Slate’s violations.