Of late, there is not a day that goes by that The Stark County Political Report does not get an e-mail, telephone call or personal entreaty from either a Maier campaign functionary or a Dordea campaign functionary making this or that allegation about the campaign practices of the other.
It seems that the two main protagonists are:
- staunch Democrat and Plain Township trustee Louis P. Giavasis:
- who is a chief deputy clerk of courts for Democrat Nancy Reinbold,
- who also happens to be the brother of Stark County Democratic Party chairman Phil Giavasis
- who (Reinbold) took over years ago from brother Phil after he left the county clerk's position,
- Phil also happens to be clerk of the Canton Municipal court,
- staunch Republican and former candidate (2004) for Stark County prosecutor Jeff Jakmides. (probably Stark County's foremost criminal defense attorney)
A copy that the SCPR was provided came from The Alliance Review which happens to be candidate Dordea's hometown.
The complainer to the SCPR was Jakmides.
Initially, he was in a fit of outrage saying that Giavasis had committed a total fabrication in saying:
He helped in getting the U.S. Marshal's Fugitive Task Force [U.S.MFTF] to expand into Stark County and has assisted in getting 300 of the most dangerous fugitives off our streets.After the SCPR verified that Maier was involved in a "formal" expansion by the U.S.MFTF at least from the standpoint of the Marshal's Cleveland office contacted Maier (as the appointed sheriff of Stark County) and (the part Giavasis omitted from his letter) various other Stark County-based law enforcement entities, to wit:
Giavasis, very sloppily and, perhaps, conveniently for "political" purposes, does not distinguish between what part the sheriff's department and other Stark County law enforcement agencies may have had in assisting in the U.S.MTFT effort in getting violent fugitives off Stark County streets.
And he does not talk about pre-June, 2013 (when the formal arrangement was reached) when former Stark County sheriff and Maier foe Tim Swanson was in charge at 4500 Atlantic Boulevard. (Note: Swanson filed a successful quo warranto resulting in Maier's ouster as sheriff on 11/06/2014 [he was reappointed on 12/11/2014] and recently endorsed Dordea).
The SCPR has contacted the Marshal's office and asked for a breakdown between the Maier year and the Swanson years.
No response so far. However, when one is forthcoming, the SCPR will supplement this blog with that information.
This is what Swanson has had to say to the SCPR:
We were originally apart of the task force and had personnel assigned to the unit. However due to budget issues we couldn't participate on a a fulltime basis through the years.
During that time period we contributed with personnel on as needed or we could spare.
The task force was very helpful when called upon and shared intelligence with the SO and the drug unit. I can't remember any specifics .After the SCPR pointed out to Jakmides that there was a least some "incomplete" truth in Giavasis' statement, he moderated his charges against Giavasis to "he misrepresented."
And The Report thinks that being the zealous advocate he has been and continues to be for Maier, that Jakmides' charge that Giavasis' misrepresented the matter is well founded.
In light of the foregoing and other Giavasis seeming "over-the-top" pro-Maier campaign activities (e.g. his Facebook page publishing of the Canton Police car/auxiliary officers displaying a "Maier for Sheriff" shirt and his involvement if not initiation of a online petition drive to put pressure to Secretary of State Ted Husted to find for Maier in and election eligibility contest), it is interesting that Giavasis would have the apparent audacity to send out this e-mail late last night, to wit:
Important message.
lougiavasis1 Oct 27 at 11:28 PM
To: crborello@aol.com jrichards13@neo.rr.com damsel16@aol.com fredrossetti@sbcglobal.net djriley5159@gmail.com and 56 more...Of course, Giavasis says nothing about Maier himself in January, 2014 refusing to re-commission American military hero Sergeant Major Dan Altieri (a 27 year veteran of the sheriff's department and decorated U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan and Iraq) because (according to Altieri) he had been (exercising his U.S. Constitution rights) to hand out Lou Darrow flyers at the December 11, 2013 conclave of the Stark County Democratic Central Committee which 101 to 66 reappointed Maier sheriff after he had been ousted.
The Sheriff has maintained and demanded that his campaign remain professional and deliver a positive message about what he has done and plans to do that will improve the Sheriffs Office and make Stark County a safer place. I am sure that most people by now have noticed the difference in the two campaigns that are running for Sheriff. In the 30 years I have been involved in in local campaigns, I have never seen the vitriol and just outright untruthfulness being thrown at a candidate for local office by their opponent than this Sheriff has happen during this campaign. It is simply amazing that our Sheriff through all of this, in spite of what has been thrown at him, he has maintained such a high level of professionalism and class. He has continued to move the Sheriff Office forward and be a positive force and example to his employees and deputies. I am very proud to call this professional law enforcement officer our Sheriff!
Lou Giavasis
Plain Township Trustee
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone
When The Report gets anything from Giavasis or Jakmides, both are suspect in terms of "there has to be more to the story" given the respective propensities of each "to put the best spin possible" on whatever is being communicated.
The SCPR knows Giavasis much better than Jakmides in terms of the public sector activities because Giavasis holds public office whereas Jakmides does not.
The Report has written numerous blogs about Giavasis both positive and critical. In the view of the SCPR he has a checkered record.
He is part of the team of trustees that has made Plain Township perhaps the most fiscally responsible township in all of Stark County.
But the SCPR thinks he has played politics in influencing placing certain persons in taxpayer supported positions in Plain Township government.
Of course, Jakmides and Giavasis are not the only "out-and-out" partisans trying to use the media to get their respective candidates' spin into public circulation.
There is Ralph Spampanato of the Stark-Tusc 912 Group.
Yesterday, Ralph sent the SCPR this e-mail:
David Pepper commits a felony in his new ad | Third Base Politics
rspam64 Oct 27 at 1:38 PM
To: tramols@att.net
http://www.thirdbasepolitics.com/david-pepper-felony/
Marty,
I share this story only because the Maier posted a picture of a vote for their candidate on his FB account.
I will try to forward that photo to you.
Ralph Spampanato
Followed up by this one:
Ralph Spampanato
rspam64 Oct 27 at 1:41 PM
To: tramols@att.net
Here's the photo from their campaign fb page.
Happy Connecting. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S® 5 Sport
The photo which The Report takes to be a Spampanato allegation of a Maier campaign use of an "actual" November (absentee?) ballot in "apparent" violation (according to a Columbus Dispatch article on the Pepper/DeWine attorney general race) of Ohio statutory law.
The Spampanato provided photo which he says he got from the Maier campaign page:
From the Dispatch article:
Under Ohio laws written before anyone ever heard of Facebook and when tweets were associated only with birds, it is illegal to show off how you voted by revealing your completed ballot to someone else.
The law says it is a fifth-degree felony for a voter to “allow the elector’s ballot to be seen by another … with the apparent intention of letting it be known how the elector is about to vote.” Another section of law prohibits displaying a marked ballot while in the polling place.
The gist of the Columbus Dispatch article, as the SCPR interprets it, is that "nobody takes the law seriously."
But partisans take such matters and seek "to make a mountain out of a molehill."
Another of the Maier "over-the-top" campaign zealots, the SCPR thinks is Sheriff's department employee (June, 2013) Derrick Loy.
Loy, Alliance-based (a former Alliance City Council commission appointee) has been the subject of a number of SCPR blogs which depict him as an out-and-out George T. Maier partisan.
And he appears to have a particular thing for Dordea in that he has written the SCPR with a scathing indictment of Dordea as a former Alliance police chief and as a city councilman (a body Dordea still serves on).
Loy has the distinction (along with Giavasis) of being a few of the "outside-of-Massillon") members of the Johnnie A. Maier, Jr. (brother of George T. Maier and former Stark Dems' chairman) instigated "Maier Loyalty Club," to wit:
Right now Loy is the center of a controversy in which he is reported to be displaying within the confines of the Stark County taxpayer supported Stark County sheriff's department a photograph of Stark County prosecutor John Ferrero and former Sheriff Tim Swanson.
Up until a few days ago, it purported show two darts on or about the photo.
But, apparently, because of SCPR reporting on it, there as been a change as indicated in this e-mail from a SCPR source:
From: ... Oct 27 at 2:27 PM
To: Martin Olson
Martin,
From what I learned this afternoon, I guess someone in George Maier's clan must read your blogs. . . .
I hear that Derrick Loy removed the throwing darts from the picture of Sheriff Swanson and Prosecutor Ferrero. I guess he replaced them with tooth picks.
Keep up the good work.
So the question to Louis Giavasis is whether or not he thinks this is an example of "I have never seen the vitriol" right under the nose of the man he describes as being a man who
"has maintained such a high level of professionalism and class?"
Surely, the purported Loy use of a taxpayer supported facility to express his disdain of a sitting and former Stark County official cannot have escaped the Maier folks.
The substitution of the tooth picks for darts clearly indicates that the Maier folks are well aware of Loy's outrage. Likely including George T. Maier himself.
Yes, the Dordea/Maier faceoff has been a nasty campaign.
But the SCPR thinks most, but certainly not all, of the nastiness has come from the Maier side of things.
For one of what the SCPR thinks is one of the Maier main players in the political hanky panky to assign to himself and to George T. Maier "the high road" is the quintessential Stark County Democratic Party stalwart Louis P. Giavasis.
Louis can try to paint that picture of himself, but the SCPR does not buy it.
His conduct belie his words!
Not long ago Dordea wrote an entry on his Facebook campaign page decrying conduct of Maier campaigners.
But then he went on to discuss a very serious incident in which he says that someone lossened lug nuts on his campaign vehicle.
Here comes the disingenuous part.
Dordea says that his relating the "lug nuts" incidents is not an attempt by him to link the Maier campaign to incident.
Really?
Who believes that?
The SCPR has castigated Dordea for the ingenuity.
The SCPR is here to hold Giavasis, Loy and Dordea apologists Jakmides and Spampanato and the candidates themselves accountable for their words and deeds!
The SCPR's problem with George T. Maier is that there are a number of character assessment questions out there as cited in previous blogs which he has not answered.
The Report has challenged Maier to sit down with the SCPR on camera and answer those questions.
Certainly, The Repository has not and is apparently not about to address those questions.
After all, Maier loyalist Louis P. Giavasis has assured us all that George T. Maier "is as pure as the white driven snow."
That's all we need, isn't it? (please do not miss the sarcasm)
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