Carlos Verna

Biography

Verna entered public service as Mayor of General Pico, and was elected to the Argentine Senate for La Pampa in 1993, and later became Chairman of the Budget Committee. He won the 2003 gubernatorial election with the support of President Carlos Menem, against the candidate of the Front for Victory faction of the Justicialist Party, Néstor Ahuad. Verna was not close to fellow Peronist President Néstor Kirchner, and was likely to be challenged by his own party if he attempted to be re-elected in 2007. He was, moreover, implicated in the scandal concerning public SIDE funds diverted to senators by the government of Fernando de la Rúa for their support of a labor law flexibilization bill in 2000. Consequently, Verna declared he would not seek political office following the end of his term in 2007, and he left office in December 2007.

Verna was reurned to his former seat in the Senate in 2009; he campaigned with markedly anti-Kirchnerist rhetoric in the heavily agrarian province (then still reeling from the effects of the 2008 Argentine government conflict with the agricultural sector, as well as a severe drought). Maintaining long-standing differences with President Cristina Kirchner from her days in the Senate, Verna voted against the use of Central Bank reserves for foreign debt retirement.

He ran for a new term as governor of La Pampa in 2015. He first defeated the Kirchnerite Fabián Bruna, proposed by the governor Óscar Jorge for the primary elections.