Campaign memo to Jay Nixon: James P. Hoffa is a tough act to follow, especially when the audience is full of Teamsters.

And they have Thunderstix.

Noisemakers in hand, union members gathered today at the Local 600 Union Hall in Maryland Heights to greet their international president, scion of iconic labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.

Oh, and Nixon was there, too.

It was Hoffa, though, who got the longer standing ovation, and earned early applause for berating Republican Gov. Matt Blunt.

“He don’t like working people. He don’t like people that work with their hands,” Hoffa said in a populist brogue that belies his University of Michigan law degree. “He thinks were peasants.”

The Hoffa family are no strangers to Missouri politics. Jimmy Hoffa’s lawyer was legendary St. Louis barrister Morris A. Shenker, the Scott Rosenblum of his day.

Hoffa’s other child, Barbara Ann Crancer, is an associate circuit court judge in St. Louis County. (Appointed by Gov. John Ashcroft, a Republican, if you’re counting at home.)

At the rally today, Hoffa promised Blunt “is going to pay” for, among other things, undoing an effort to grant collective bargaining rights  to state employees.

Soon afterward, Nixon took the stage, perhaps losing the Teamsters slightly during a meandering tale about the soccer misadventures of Jemimah Jr., which was actually a story about Nixon’s late mother-in-law.

But he did earn a laugh while hawking his campaign apparel, sold in the Boy Scout colors or orange and blue.

“The orange ones are especially useful during deer season,” Nixon said. “Or highway work. Or whatever.”