Ousted head of Philly health care workers’ union charged with stealing to illegally support Democratic campaigns

The former head of one of Philadelphia’s largest labor unions stole more than $150,000 from his members to illegally support candidates in the city’s May 2019 Democratic primary election, state and federal authorities said.

Christen “Chris” Woods, who led District 1199C of the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare Employees from 2019 to 2021, disguised the missing money as payments to renovate the bar in his union’s Old City headquarters, a state grand jury concluded in a presentment made public Monday.

Instead, grand jurors found, the funds went to pay a Philadelphia political consultant, who handled get-out-the-vote efforts for several candidates that Woods and his union had endorsed.

» READ MORE: Read the presentment

Woods and that consultant — Tracy Hardy, former chief of staff to state Sen. Sharif Street, the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party — now face felony charges tied to what prosecutors describe as their efforts to skirt state campaign finance laws and U.S. Labor Department union reporting requirements. If convicted, they could be sentenced to as long as 20 years behind bars on the most serious counts.

“The law is very clear about how unions can support candidates and their campaigns,” Attorney General Michelle Henry said in a statement. “These two men are accused of intentionally defrauding a workers’ union with an elaborate scheme to steal and divert money for political purposes.”

Reached by text message Tuesday, Woods, 39, declined to comment, referring all questions to his lawyers. Defense attorneys Keir Bradford-Grey and Mark Cedrone pushed back on the accusations in a statement, calling them a “limited, one-sided view.”

“Mr. Woods did not defraud or conspire to defraud the members of District 1199C for whom he fought throughout his career,” they said. “In reality it was the failure to plan that bring Mr. Woods into this case. That’s not criminal, and it’s unfortunate we are here.”

Still, the case against the former labor leader and the political consultant is the culmination of a five-year investigation by state prosecutors and the FBI as well as controversy that has swirled around Woods’ leadership at his union for years.

Woods first rose to prominence as second-in-command to Henry Nicholas, a towering figure in the city’s organized labor and politics who in more than three decades at the helm of District 1199C transformed the more than 8,000-member union representing hospital and nursing home employees into a political force whose endorsements helped elect mayors, governors, and members of City Council.

Woods’ own rising clout landed him a spot on District Attorney Larry Krasner’s transition team even before he became head of his union.

But after Woods assumed day-to-day operations as acting president in 2019, his tenure proved to be short-lived. The union’s national leadership ousted him within two years in a dispute over the local’s finances. Woods, who is Black, dismissed the move at the time as politically and racially motivated.

The case filed against Woods last week appears to be unrelated to those events. And the grand jury presentment makes no mention of which May 2019 primary candidates benefited from what prosecutors now describe as his illegal assistance paid for with union funds.

But that year, District 1199C endorsed several candidates, including Jim Kenney, who was seeking his second mayoral term, and City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who went on to win a general election race securing his seat on the board. Thomas and Woods, who grew up together in North Philadelphia, cofounded a nonprofit that puts on annual basketball summer camps across the city.

The union’s backing also helped to elect crime victim activist Movita Johnson-Harrell to a state House seat representing the 190th District in West Philadelphia during a special election in March of that year. She pleaded guilty to charges of embezzling from a nonprofit she ran and resigned her seat within eight months of her swearing in.

But despite the full slate of candidates District 1199C was backing that spring, its political action committee had next to no money to support those campaigns.

State campaign finance laws prohibit unions from donating directly to political campaigns out of their general funds. Instead, those contributions must come from affiliated political action committees that are funded through voluntary contributions from members’ paychecks.

Yet, in the two months before the May 2019 primary, District 1199C’s PAC never had more than $3,500 in the bank, according to campaign finance records. One witness who testified before the grand jury described it as a “nothing” PAC, according to the presentment.

So, prosecutors say, Woods raided his union’s general fund, instead. And that, they contend, is where Hardy — his longtime friend and, now, his codefendant — came in.

In March 2019, Woods hired a company Hardy founded a few months earlier — Manayunk Construction and Development Corp. — to renovate the bar at District 1199C’s union hall.

Hardy — an old hand in Philadelphia political circles, former aide to Mayor John F. Street and the onetime chief of staff to Street’s son, State Sen. Sharif Street — had no construction experience and his company was not licensed to work in the city.

Still, prosecutors say, he worked with Woods to secure a $140,000 contract from the union by rigging the bids and submitting fraudulent, more expensive estimates purportedly from other companies so it would appear to the union’s board that the bidding process had been competitive.

The union paid Hardy’s construction firm more than $180,000 over the next two months, ostensibly to complete electrical, plumbing, and other repairs to the District 1199C’s bar.

While investigators acknowledge some of that work was completed, the actual cost of those repairs was less than one-third the sum doled out to Hardy’s firm during the period. And in one instance the union later paid a third-party company to complete some of the same electrical work on the bar that Hardy had already billed $20,000 to complete.

The majority of the funds Hardy’s construction firm received went to supporting his political work on Woods’ and District 1199C’s behalf, prosecutors said.

Hardy, 51, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday on the charges against him or political work on behalf of District 1199C-backed candidates in May 2019. Representatives from the union also did not return phone calls.

But the presentment details efforts by Woods and Hardy to further cement the political consultant’s ties to the union after the primary that has now landed both men in court.

In June of that year, Hardy drew up a proposed contract that would have required District 1199C to pay his consulting firm, Monroe Press, $12,000 a month for political work, investigators said — an extraordinary sum that eclipsed the retainer the union paid each month to its own lawyers.

Still, Woods called District 1199′s attorney Lance Geren to ask how much of the union’s general fund it could spend for political purposes, prosecutors said.

Geren told him none at all. Woods, according to the presentment, abruptly hung up the phone.

The lawyer, who would later testify before the grand jury that charged Woods and Hardy this week, resigned within months of that phone call.

Staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.

Read the presentment: