Thinking of voting for J. Paul Brown? Reconsider. The man has demonstrated himself unsuited for public office, ready and willing to misrepresent the positions and intentions of others he knows little to nothing of. In the last decade, Brown has attended a grand total of one La Plata Electric Association board meeting (the free lunch part). Yet during my re-election campaign this spring, he apparently felt that was sufficient qualification to fabricate and publicly misrepresent mine and others’ well-intentioned efforts. His claims in the pages of the Herald (May 11) were so mean-spirited and outrageous that the editorial board broke its own policy, sharing his and Christi Zeller’s diatribes with me before publication and allowing a same-page response. So I did a little research.

It seems he had contacted a few farmers growing for an investor with San Juan Bioenergy – the company I built but which failed after the recession did a bulls-eye on us. Brown asked them leading questions to support his pre-existing conclusions, and then cited them as references without their permission. In 2008, he was directly involved with a right-wing media group from the Front Range that published a fake newspaper demeaning former county commissioner Wally White. And as a “conservative,” he complains of government largesse, yet hypocritically pockets (and as county commissioner voted for) agricultural subsidies supporting his sheep ranching operation.

With a history of misdeeds and perversions like these, J. Paul has shown such a lack of integrity as to demonstrate himself incapable of representing anyone but himself, much less Southwest Colorado residents in a public capacity at the state Capitol. In stark contrast, Mike McLachlan has shown the highest levels of integrity in addressing the challenging questions before him at the State Legislature, and a genuine concern for his constituents. Vote for Mike McLachlan.

Jeff Berman

Durango