Campaign official for Lynn candidate quits

Dennis Liberge, 56, said he resigned as cochairman of Kennedy’s campaign Friday night, after discussing his conviction on a conspiracy to distribute cocaine with Kennedy. “I figured it was the thing to do,’’ Liberge said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I didn’t want to become a distraction in the campaign.’’

Liberge’s resignation comes amid an intensely heated campaign for Lynn, the state’s ninth-largest city with almost 90,000 residents.

Lynn police said yesterday that they are investigating an allegation made by Kennedy that incumbent Edward J. Clancy Jr. violated state election law by attaching a copy of her signature to one of his campaign fliers, stating that she favored raising property taxes. The flier cited an excerpt from a candidate’s questionnaire issued by the North Shore Labor Council, which asked candidates to rank which taxes they would raise for revenues. The labor council has endorsed Kennedy in the Nov. 3 election.

“She’s claiming, relative to her signature on the flier, that it was used to mislead the public,’’ said Kevin Coppinger, Lynn’s acting police chief. He added that a complaint has not yet been filed.

Police also will consult with the Essex district attorney to determine whether the law was broken. “This a little bit out of our normal range of investigation,’’ Coppinger said.

Kennedy declined to comment yesterday.

The 17-year-old charge has been circulating on a Lynn political blog for several days. Yesterday, Liberge blamed his resignation on hardball politics. “I served my time,’’ he said. “As far as I’m concerned, what he [Clancy] did, lifting a document, is more criminal than what I did.’’

Liberge said his conviction stemmed from an incident in the 1980s, when he was living in Maine. “I was associated with some people, who they [the government] wanted to take down,’’ he said.

Liberge said Kennedy did not know of his conviction when she asked him to manage her campaign. “I didn’t feel an obligation to tell anybody,’’ he said.

He was one of three men indicted in a federal drug investigation in Maine in 1992, according to the US District Court of Maine. Liberge said he was convicted on a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He later filed an appeal to the conviction but lost. He ultimately served two years at a federal prison in Allenwood, Pa., he said.

“I served my time,’’ said Liberge. “I’ve done a lot to help people since coming back to Lynn.’’

Liberge joined Kennedy’s campaign after the unexpected death in July of former Lynn mayor Patrick J. McManus, who was running to regain the office he vacated in 2002. Kennedy launched a write-in campaign for mayor and finished first in the September primary, beating Clancy by 211 votes.

The mayoral race has been contentious, with Clancy and Kennedy sparring at community debates over property taxes, residency, and party loyalty. Clancy, a former state representative and senator, is a Democrat. Kennedy, a five-term councilor at large, and a lawyer who works as a part-time driver for the MBTA Ride program in Lynn, is a Republican.

Yesterday, Clancy dismissed Kennedy’s complaints about his flier. “It’s a smokescreen to cover her answer that [she feels] the first revenue raising option should be property taxes,’’ he said.

Clancy said Kennedy’s signature was taken from a page in a packet sent to candidates in August by the labor council. The first page asked candidates to sign a pledge supporting workers’ rights to organize. A six-page questionnaire followed, part of which asked candidates to rank, in order of preference, which tax they would use to raise revenue.

Kennedy ranked property taxes first, while Clancy put it sixth. Clancy said he showed Kennedy a copy of her signature, and her answer, during a debate sponsored last week by a local chapter of the NAACP. “I wanted to verify that it was her signature,’’ Clancy said. “She said that it was. . . . We just took an exact copy of the page [with her answer about property taxes] and copied her signature, which are both genuine. There is nothing false about anything.’’

Kathy McCabe can be reached at kmccabe@globe.com.