"no" vote fell short of the two-thirds needed to reject a contract and authorize a strike. The contract votes weakened Mathis' support on the union's executive board because Mathis was the highest-ranking official involved in the talks. Mathis's support among the union's leadership was never strong. Mathis was considered much more liberal Presser or the rest of the Teamsters' leadership at the time, and he was much more in favor of participating fully in AFL-CIO. Mathis was challenged by a faction of conservative Teamsters led by Joseph Trerotola, the union's First Vice President. Trerotola was deeply angered by the 1986 constitutional amendment which allowed Mathis to assume the presidency, and he began building a coalition to oust him. When Mathis called a meeting in Arizona (where Presser was being treated), Trerotola refused to attend. Initially, possible challengers included Joseph W. Morgan (who had sought to become interim president after Roy Lee Williams' resignation in 1983, Walter Shea (director of the Eastern Conference of Teamsters in Washington, D.C.), Donald Peters (a Teamster leader in Chicago), and Arnie Weinmeister (a Teamster official in Washington state and protégé of former interim president George Mock). Mathis suffered another blow to his candidacy on June 28, 1988, when federal officials filed suit in federal court to impose a trusteeship on the Teamsters union.. Presser died on July 9, 1988, triggering an election for a new president. But at an executive board meeting on July 18, 1988, Mathis was unseated as president in favor of William J. McCarthy, president of the New England Conference of Teamsters. McCarthy, a protégé of Jimmy Hoffa, emerged as a candidate days before the vote. He was seen as a much more aggressive leader than Mathis. McCarthy—who led the opposition to the freight and warehouse contract—promised to fight the government's trusteeship suit, adopt a more confrontational collective bargaining posture, end the union's thaw toward the rest of the AFL-CIO, and endorse a George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. Peters, Shea and Weinmeister pulled out of the running, throwing their support behind McCarthy. After a bitter, rancorous, two-and-a-half-hour board meeting, the board voted 9-to-8 to select McCarthy as the union's new president. Vice president Daniel Ligurotis of Chicago cast the deciding vote. Post-presidency In late December 1988, the federal government sued to overturn Mathis' 1987 election as president of Local 728. In March 1989, Mathis signed an agreement with