Fallout amid Lynn election accusations

LYNN – Mayoral challenger Judith Flanagan Kennedy is mulling whether to ditch her campaign manager after learning of his prior drug conviction while the North Shore Labor Council chastises incumbent Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. for purportedly misrepresenting the results of the group’s candidate survey.Dennis Liberge, Kennedy’s campaign manager, was convicted 28 years ago of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. An appellate court upheld the verdict. Kennedy on Wednesday said she was unaware of Liberge’s criminal past and planned to discuss it with him face-to-face before taking any action.Liberge was part of the campaign headquarters staff of the late Patrick J. McManus, a former Lynn mayor running for re-election against Clancy when he died. Kennedy entered the mayor’s race after McManus’ death, taking over the same headquarters location near Wyoma Square and, in some instances, inheriting McManus’ campaign workers, Liberge among them.”We ran our campaign for a while by committee,” Kennedy said Friday. “Kenny Weeks and Dennis Liberge were part of the McManus team and seemed to have the most knowledge. Kenny had lots of skills on the technical side of things and I felt that together they would make a good leadership team.”Kennedy said her campaign staff planned to meet late Friday to discuss the Liberge situation and make a decision on how to proceed.During a series of mayoral debates over the past two months, Clancy has made an issue of a candidates’ survey that Kennedy completed, on which she selected raising property taxes among the choices for how Lynn might raise revenue. Although Kennedy has publicly explained the other answer choices were not applicable to Lynn, Clancy has used the document to promote his own campaign.The survey – a questionnaire – was conducted by the North Shore Labor Council, a Lynn-based labor organization that has endorsed Kennedy. According to Jeffrey Crosby, the labor council president, Clancy has used the survey as fodder in the mayor’s race to misrepresent Kennedy’s position as someone prone to raise property taxes.”The North Shore Labor Council would like to provide accurate information regarding its endorsement,” Crosby said Friday, noting that the council asks all candidates who run for local elected office to complete a questionnaire and then participate in an interview with the council’s Political Action Committee.”The questionnaire often refers to issues on both the municipal and state level. The challenge of increasing revenues for the city of Lynn was one of many issues raised on our questionnaire and discussed during the candidate interviews. The council delegates who took part in the Political Action Committee interview all know from that interview that Judy Flanagan Kennedy does not want to raise property taxes.”Crosby further noted that “based on the entirety of the information we gathered, and from our wider experience with each of the Lynn mayoral candidates, the council then voted to endorse Judy Flanagan Kennedy in the mayoral race. We stand by that endorsement.”Liberge earlier this week criticized Clancy for using the labor council survey because it both misrepresents Kennedy’s position on taxation and was supposed to have been confidential. “All the copies of that survey were shredded, yet here the Clancy camp has been waving around a copy, bringing it to public debates. Clancy even took a copy and physically threw it at Judy after one of those debates,” Liberge said.Click here for complete Lynnelection coverage, candidate profiles and more. You may also comment on theelection and read what others have to say.