Carey in 1996. Hoffa ran a strong campaign, trading on the mystique still attached to his late father's name and promising to restore those days of glory. Carey appeared, however, to have won a close election. Shortly afterward in 1997, the union initiated a large and successful strike against UPS. The parcel services department by that time had become the largest division in the union. Carey was removed from the union's leadership by the IRB shortly thereafter, when evidence that individuals in his office had arranged for transfer of several thousand dollars to an outside contractor, which then arranged for another entity to make an equivalent contribution to the Carey campaign. Carey was indicted for lying to investigators about his campaign funding but was acquitted of all charges in a 2001 trial. In the 1998 election to succeed Carey, James P. Hoffa was elected handily. He became president of the Teamsters on March 19, 1999, and took the union in a more moderate direction, tempering the union's support for Democrats and attempting to come to terms with powerful Republicans in Congress. The union has merged in recent years with a number of unions from other industries, including the Graphic Communications International Union, a printing industry union, and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, both from the railway industry. On July 25, 2005, the Teamsters disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO and became a founding member of the new national trade union center, the Change to Win Federation. In 2009, UPS, many employees of which are members of the Teamsters, lobbied to have language added to the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009 (H.R. 915) to change how UPS and FedEx compete with one another. In response, FedEx launched a large, online advertising campaign aimed at UPS and the Teamsters, called 'Stop the Brown Bailout'. Internal Teamsters politics Prior to the 1970s, no long-lived caucuses existed within the Teamsters union. Challengers for office ran on their personal appeal and individual power base, rather than on caucus or "party" platforms and such challenges were infrequent. The Teamster leadership was well-established and somewhat self-perpetuating, and challengers only rarely achieved victories at the local and (even less frequently) regional levels. This changed in the 1970s. A national wildcat strike challenged President Frank Fitzsimmons' control over the union, but failed. After the strike, a reform movement known as "Teamsters United Rank and