Flier flap hits Lynn mayoral contest

Kennedy said she found out about the flier when it arrived in her mailbox Saturday afternoon.

She said the flier, sent out less than two weeks before the city election, combined pieces from two documents: a signature from a form dated Aug. 25, 2009 and a snippet from a labor council questionnaire about tax preferences.

“They cut-and-pasted my signature from an entirely different document,’’ Kennedy said. “The mailing claimed to be an actual copy of the survey.’’

The mailer, paid for by the Committee to Elect Clancy, includes Kennedy’s signature below a list of tax options from a North Shore Labor Council candidate questionnaire. A copy of the six-page questionnaire obtained by the Globe showed no signature.

Clancy said in a phone interview yesterday that Kennedy’s allegations were “splitting hairs’’ and avoiding the issue of her selection of property taxes as her first choice to raise revenue. Clancy said he ranked property taxes as his sixth choice on the questionnaire.

Kennedy, a five-term city councilor at large, headed to the Lynn police station Saturday evening, several hours after she received the flier. Lynn police said yesterday that her complaint is being investigated.

Kennedy said she also has reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation because the fliers were mailed through the Postal Service. The FBI office in Boston did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Clancy, who was elected without opposition in 2001 and had no challengers in 2005, acknowledged that Kennedy’s signature was from a separate page and that the flier merged it with her choice of property taxes but maintained that the signature was part of the questionnaire.

“If a contract’s 100 pages and you sign the last page, it’s still a contract,’’ Clancy said. “How many one-page documents do you see in this day and age?’’

Kennedy, however, said her signature was most likely taken from a union “right to organize pledge’’ also sent to the North Shore Labor Council, which organized the questionnaire and later endorsed her candidacy.

The North Shore Labor Council refers to the disputed pages as “the enclosed questionnaire, and right to organize pledge’’ in a letter.

Clancy said yesterday that neither police nor Kennedy had contacted about any charges, but upon hearing about the allegations, he emphasized that Kennedy’s signature was not forged.

“If the allegation was that the signature was forged, that’s a different story. That’s a whole different issue,’’ he said.

Clancy said the flier used Kennedy’s signature to demonstrate her position on the tax options, instead of making an allegation without evidence.

Kennedy said in a phone interview yesterday that she picked property taxes as a revenue raiser because other options on the questionnaire - such as sales tax and gas tax - would be out of her control as mayor.

Two-term Lynn City Councilor Pete Capano agreed with the mayor.

“It’s not like somebody signing someone’s check, like forgery or something like that,’’ Capano said. “She admits to filling it out. That’s her position.’’

Kennedy won a primary election as a write-in candidate against Clancy by some 200 votes. She launched a sticker campaign after former Mayor Patrick J. McManus, who was seeking his old seat, died this summer.

Kennedy said the campaign has been littered with tactics such as stolen endorsement signs and “an attempt to paint me as an evil Republican. It’s just been dirty and petty and now I think it’s risen and crossed the line into criminal territory.’’

The mayoral candidates are slated to debate over breakfast Friday.

“I just want to focus on the issues and get through the last 10 days of the campaign,’’ Kennedy said.