Sanders adviser was convicted of union embezzling
A consultant for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was convicted of embezzling money from a labor union three years ago, after he was caught stealing funds from the United Steelworkers, according to court records.
Chuck Rocha, whose firm Solidarity Strategies has brought in $204,000 from the Sanders campaign, was hired to extend the Vermont senator’s reach into the Latino community. Court and Labor Department records claim that he used the union’s money to buy Stanley Cup Finals tickets and pay for golf trips to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Florida.
Rocha pleaded guilty in 2013 to one felony count of union embezzlement for stealing funds from the United Steelworkers union in 2008 and 2009, when he was its political director. He also “acknowledged responsibility for the other 17 counts,” according to the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. His plea deal barred him from working as an officer or agent at a labor organization until 2026.
Rocha wasn’t a merely a rank-and-file member of the Steelworkers back then: Political directors are the main points of contact between union leadership and policymakers, and they often have unfettered access to union coffers. Rocha managed a $30 million budget in his position, according to an online biography.
The $204,349.86 directed to Rocha’s firm is dwarfed by the $32 million the Sanders campaign disbursed in the same period, but Rocha’s hiring is nonetheless significant because it illustrates the type of wrongdoing that the populist campaign, laser-focused on uprooting malfeasance in the political establishment, deems forgivable. Rocha’s firm was among the highest-grossing Sanders clients providing political strategy and consulting, a POLITICO review of work that appears to be similar shows.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told POLITICO he had no qualms about Rocha’s hire.
“It’s not politically sensitive at all,” Weaver said. “I’m not politically afraid of this story at all. Please, I’m asking you to print.”
And the disclosures about Rocha come as Sanders has been unable to win a substantial amount of endorsements from the union establishment in Washington. He has appeared to outmatch Clinton, however, with enthusiastic support from the union movement’s activist rank and file.
“What we are seeing is a lot of grass-roots support in union after union in this country, but that support has not necessarily trickled up to the leadership,” Sanders said in December.
And Rocha’s offense could hardly be considered a youthful indiscretion: He was 43 when he was indicted.
Weaver described Rocha as a “a dedicated person committed to fighting for working people in this country and for people of color.”
A federal judge described Rocha as having taken a “steep, sharp and successful climb from the floor of a tire plant in Texas to the top” of the Steelworkers union. Rocha was the only Latino political director in the union movement when he took the position with the Steelworkers, according to his online biography.
A federal grand jury indicted Rocha in 2012 on 18 counts arising from his alleged misuse of union funds. The indictment claimed Rocha misused a union credit card and voucher system, spending union money on golfing trips to Florida and Myrtle Beach, S.C., and personal trips to London and Orlando, among other expenditures.
Rocha eventually pleaded guilty to one count, admitting he used union money for a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals in Detroit in 2009.
He was sentenced to probation and a $2,000 fine.
Rocha has a track record of working for campaigns: He was the national labor director for Dick Gephardt’s and John Edwards’ campaigns in the 2004 and 2008 cycles, according to an online biography. The Sanders disbursements to Rocha’s company include a Dec. 28 payment of $60,000 for a direct mail campaign; a Dec. 1 payment of $23,265.39 payment for consulting and political research; a Nov. 19 payment of $3,200.96 for telephone calls; a Nov. 11 payment of $63,588.90 for translation services; a Nov. 2 payment of $45,669.61 for political strategy consulting; and an Oct. 5 payment of $8,625 for political strategy consulting.