State legislative candidate Steven Verr and state Rep. Michael Brown continue to clash over personal issues, as perhaps the most closely contested race in McHenry County gets down to the last days before Tuesday’s election.
Brown has issued a campaign brochure that repeats old charges against Verr and adds new ones. Replying to the charges, Verr has countered with a poll that shows him in the lead by 11 percentage points. That poll, however, shows nearly a third of voters are undecided.
The race in the 63rd House District has become so personal that Brown has become a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, an organization in which Verr holds a life membership. On the spot on the membership application requiring the name of the applicant’s sponsor, Brown wrote Verr’s name, according to a Brown spokesman.
The spokesman said Brown joined the organization to show that membership does not constitute proof of having been an intelligence officer.
Verr, a McHenry lawyer, claims to have been an intelligence officer for the U.S. government in Afghanistan in the 1980s but says he may not reveal what he did there or the agency for which he worked.
Verr brought retired Army Lt. Col. Angelo DiLiberati to a news conference Tuesday in McHenry. DiLiberati, president of the Midwest chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, said that based on his connections in the intelligence community, he believes Verr was a foreign intelligence officer but also could produce no proof.
Brown of Crystal Lake was appointed last year to replace the retiring Anne Hughes.
Brown, whose recent campaign literature says Verr has “made it a practice” to sue police departments, said in an interview Tuesday that the suits were meritless complaints by “disgruntled” employees.
However, on Monday, Verr released a letter from Chicago lawyer Terence E. Flynn, who said that when Verr was an associate with his firm, Verr helped defend the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District against injury claims that were without merit.
Verr also said at a news conference Monday that since opening his law practice in 1993, he has not filed one lawsuit against a police department or municipality.
Brown’s campaign brochure also claims Verr’s salary was garnished to repay a student loan from Harvard University.
Verr previously has said he sued Harvard in a dispute over the subject of his proposed doctoral thesis. Harvard’s demand for repayment of a $3,000 loan was combined with Verr’s suit, he said. A settlement of the case in 1991 provided for, among other things, his payment to Harvard of about $800, Verr says.
Verr got help this week from Crystal Lake lawyer James F. Bishop, who held a news conference to say that Brown reversed himself at the last minute when he voted for a controversial gravel pit just outside of Hebron.
The vote came in July 1997 when Brown was a McHenry County Board member. Bishop, who was representing two local businesses that opposed the pit, said Brown told him on numerous occasions that he would vote against the pit.
However, Brown voted at the July 15, 1997, meeting with the 12-11 majority that approved a conditional use permit to operate the pit.
Brown denied making any promise to oppose the gravel pit.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea why I would have given him any assurance of anything. . . . Jim Bishop made a promise (to block the permit) that he couldn’t deliver, and now he’s trying to defame me,” Brown said.
