(VIDEO) CAMPAIGN FINANCE: MASSILLON MAYOR FRANCIS H. CICCHINELLI, JR - WHO SUPPORTS HIM? ALSO, SEE/HEAR CATAZARO-PERRY DESCRIBE THE BEGINNING OF THE RIGHT BETWEEN HER AND CICCHINELLI?

Part I of the SCPR Mayor Francis H. Cicchinelli, Jr pre-primary campaign finance report focuses on his "general public" supporters.  Part II (coming up later this week will spotlight Massillon city employees who contributed to his campaign and a look into other office seeker/elected officials that he supports.

Mayor Cicchinelli likes to make a big to-do about having been one of the originals to ask Kathy Catazaro-Perry to consider running for office when she moved from Perry Township into Massillon proper.  When asked why she has turned against him, he sort of shrugs his shoulders suggesting a "I don't have a clue" and then speculates that his arch-enemy Johnnie A. Maier, Jr. (Massillon clerk of courts and former Democratic Party chairman as well as his chief deputy and Stark County Democratic Party political director Shane Jackson) poisoned her against him.

It appears that his account has a Paul Harvey-esque "rest of the story" which Catazaro-Perry revealed at their appearance at the Lincoln-Lions Theater in downtown Massillon last Thursday evening.

Here is the Catazaro-Perry rejoinder:



Interesting, no?  If you don't go with Cicchinelli, you get screamed at and mayoral support of your upcoming opponent?  Hmm?

The one thing that the SCPR is big about is one being one's own person.

However, as The Report has written many times, yours truly is skeptical that Catazaro-Perry is her own person in the face of her close advisers that make up the Maier-led faction of Massillon Democrats.

In comparing the pre-primary campaign finance reports of Cicchinelli and Catazaro-Perry, it is to be noted that there is very little, if any, support to the candidates from the same contributors.  An example, former Stark County Auditor Kim Perez supports Cicchinelli whereas Stark County Sheriff Chief Deputy (Kim's brother) supports Catazaro-Perry.  Of course, neither is from Massillon.

Looking over Cicchinelli's list of contributors, it seems to the SCPR Cicchinelli is the candidate of Massillon business interests and gets no union support.  Also, it appears that someone in the Cicchinelli campaign has been leaning on folks who have gotten appointments to city boards and commissioners to contribute to the mayor.

Here is the list:

(VIDEO) LWV FORUM FEATURING CICCHINELLI, CATAZARO-PERRY (DEMOCRATS) AND BRUNCKHART, OSER (REPUBLICANS)

(VIDEO: CICCHINELLI ON CATAZARO-PERRY) INTERESTING - MASSILLON MAYORAL CANDIDATE KATHY CATAZARO-PERRY IN CAMPAIGN LITERATURE WANTS MASSILLON BACK. HMM?

Massillon City Councilwoman (and Massillon mayoral candidate) Kathy Catazaro-Perry is sounding like a Tea Partier these days.

Last week she sent out a campaign fundraiser solicitation letter (to be held March 8, 2011 at the Firehouse Grill) proclaiming "... it really is time to take back our city."  As if anyone has a right to possess a country, state or city?  Catazaro-Perry as a councilperson and therefore a part of officialdom in Massillon has - in a sense - been in partial possession of Massillon for as long as she has been on Council.  So the "it really is time to take back our city" is a play on campaign rhetoric designed to strike an emotional chord with voters that likely came from close campaign advisers (perhaps Johnnie A. Maier, Jr., Shane Jackson and Eddie Elum?) rather than something she thought up.

She (Ward 3) along with Councilpersons Anderson (Ward 2) and Townsend (Ward 4) have been the main body of the opposition to the administration of Mayor Francis H. Cicchinelli, Jr and, accordingly, have - as a part of officialdom - staked out an agenda.

What is the agenda?

Apparently, the following is, at least, a partial list:

• Get Massillon's executive department of government (the mayor's office) out of the business of running the Parks and Recreation Board; de facto or otherwise
• Rid Massillon of its golf course and restaurant complex
• Restore Massillon to fiscal solvency
• Persuading Massillonians to accept lesser services as part of a drive to solvency
• Make "the public interest" a primacy over special interests
• Demonstrate courageous leadership

Here what Catazaro-Perry has to say about her plan for Massillon in the fundraising letter:

As the SCPR sees this race, Catazaro-Perry may be in the best position of anyone in recent times to defeat Mayor Cicchinelli who has been a part of Massillon government for 38 consecutive years. There comes a point in time in which longevity because a liability.  The question for Cicchinelli in 2011 is:  has that time arrived for him?  For if it has, then there is little he can do to stave off defeat in a little over 60 days.

If Catazaro-Perry is to win, she will have to convince Massillonians of two things:  (1)  It is time for Cicchinelli to go so that Massillon can have a fresh and generational change of leadership, and (2) She is her own person.

Some political observers see Catazaro-Perry as being the handmaiden of the Maier, Jackson et al political power base in Massillon.  Maier is clerk of courts (and former de jure head of the Stark County Democratic Party); Jackson is Maier's chief deputy (and political director of the Stark County Democratic Party) and draws a higher income as chief deputy than the mayor of Massillon.  

Naturally, Catazaro-Perry denies that she is controlled by the Maier-Jackson et al political cabal.  But as the SCPR sees it, she, indeed, is beholden to the rival-Cicchinelli Massillon political force for political advice and counsel.  A recent incident in which Councilman David McCune worked her over in a political sense in persuading her to pursue a change (until other councilpersons clued her in) in Massillon's law (to cover what appears to have been a McCune personal interest) indicates that she does not possess overall political astuteness.

To The Report, Catazaro-Perry's gullibility on the McCune matter is a sign that she is not ready for political prime time.  The SCPR is convinced, as mayor, she will be reliant on Maier, Jackson et al for direction.

For many Massillonians the prospect of choosing between Cicchinelli and Catazaro-Perry will truly be a "Morton's fork:"  which is to say - "choices which yield equivalent, often undesirable, results."

Cicchinelli's main economic development tool seems to be annexation which, at best, is a supplemental strategy; not a centerpiece.  Moreover, he has embraced a number of ill-advised projects which have proved to be a drain on Massillon's meager resources.  Finally, his "smoke and mirrors" budgeting more than suggests that Massillon's financial infrastructure in fragile - at best.

Such is what often happens when entrenched political interests war with one another.

It appears to the SCPR that Massillon is in the throes of two political power bases warring with one another with little, if anything, to be gained by the citizens of Massillon.

To get a sense of the history of Cicchinelli/Catazaro-Perry, view this video which the SCPR took of the Mayor in June, 2008.

MASSILLON MAYOR FRANCIS H. CICCHINELLI, JR TO RESIGN FROM STARK CO. DEMOCRATIC PARTY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE!

UPDATED 02/06/2011 AT 3:30 P.M.


The Stark County Political Report has learned that Mayor Francis H. Cicchinelli, Jr. of Massillon will be resigning soon from the Stark County Democratic Party Executive Committee.

Cicchinelli, who regards himself as a staunch "everyday" Democrat, says that the very top leadership of the Stark Dems is out of touch with rank and file Democrats and that he will be resigning from the executive committee soon.

Although not given as a reason by Cicchinelli, the SCPR believes that a primary reason is that it appears Cicchinelli that Chairman Randy Gonzalez and the top brass of the Stark "organized" Democratic Party are lining up behind Kathy Catazaro-Perry who filed last week as an opponent of Cicchinelli in the May 3, 2011 Democratic Primary.

The Report noted recently that Catazaro-Perry was huddled up with Chairman Gonzalez at Canton mayor William J. Healy, II's January 22nd formal announcement that he was running for reelection.

Mayor Cicchinelli tells the SCPR that Cody Gonzalez (chief deputy of the Stark recorder's office) and Shane Jackson (political director of the Stark Dems and chief deputy of the Massillon clerk of courts office) were camped out with Catazaro-Perry at the Stark Board of Elections (BOE) at the filing deadline in apparent support of Catazaro-Perry.

Cicchinelli is not buying Gonzalez's stated reason for being at the BOE to get the list of candidates filing for his father (Randy Gonzalez) who was out of the country.

As far as Frank Cicchinelli is concerned, the "real" chairman of the Stark County Democrats is Johnnie A. Maier, Jr who, along Massillon Municipal Court judge Eddie Elum, and Maier's political acolyte Shane Jackson has been a long time avowed political enemy of the Mayor.  He believes that Gonzalez follows Maier's directives.

The intensity of what Cicchinelli believes to be a Maier-led political attack on him has picked up since March, 2010 when an anonymous blog - strictly directed against the Mayor - sprang up.  There is no doubt, Cicchinelli says, that the blog is the brainchild of Maier and that it is most likely written by Shane Jackson.  Moreover, he thinks that Maier and Jackson are the ghost writers for Catazaro-Perry's campaign material and that they are orchestrating her campaign.

The SCPR's take on the anti-Cicchinelli blog (also with a Massillon Board of Education element to it) is that it appears to be a mimic of the now defunct Stark Politics blog which some think was written by an official of the Stark County Republican Party.  Stark Politics was pretty much a cowardly blog (i.e. written anonymously) Republican-esque (i.e. trumpeting certain kinds of Republicans; not all).  It went belly-up about two years ago.

Back to Cicchinelli.

Cicchinelli expects the campaign to be "down and dirty."

An interesting question to ponder is: who will Stark's unions support?  In the May 6, 2007 primary, Tim Bryan was "the" candidate of the trades as a consequence of a tiff between former Cicchinelli friend Mike McElfresh (now president of the trades) over Cicchinelli - according to McElfresh - not being supportive enough of the trades.  The trade unionists held rallies in downtown Massillon is support of Bryan.

The SCPR believes that the Stark trades will support Catazaro-Perry.  Cicchinelli is not ready to concede such to be the case.  He points to work with the trades leadership to get them opportunities for a recent Fresh Mark, Inc project in Massillon.

The battleground?  Whether or not Catazaro-Perry can get a majority vote in Massillon's City Council to mandate that all city contracts are subject to a master Project Labor Agreement (PLA)?

Cicchinelli says that the trades are working through a member of Council to bring a PLA proposal to the floor between now and the May election.

If she can pull it off, it is hard to see how the trades and do anything other than support Catazaro-Perry.

However, she is beset by a union perception that chief supporter Maier is not especially labor friendly. Several years ago, Maier was perceived by many as having forced well-like retired ironworker Billy Sherer, Sr from his post on the Stark Board of Elections.  A post that Stark unions had come to think as being a "labor" position inasmuch as unions almost exclusively support Democratic candidates.

Cicchinelli points out that over his political career (including the Bryan campaign) he has had strong union support from the steelworkers and the American Federation of State, Municipal and County workers (AFSCME).

The SCPR sees that union support issue could be a key on whether or not Catazaro-Perry can get to the majority vote mark in what is likely to be a 4,000 person voter base in the May 3rd election.

While The Report thinks that Catazaro-Perry has a better opportunity to win than Bryan did, Frank Cicchinelli is a political survivor and no one should be surprised if he hangs on to win another term as the mayor of Massillon.

But if he does win, it will have to be with most, if not all the local Democratic Party "powers that be," (openly, in the case of Maier, Elum and Jackson; privately, in the case of Gonzalez et al) in the Catazaro-Perry corner.

IF JOHNNIE A. MAIER, JR. WERE TO LOSE THIS FALL IN MASSILLON, WOULD MASSILLON EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN?

There is some good political news coming out of Massillon these days insofar as the SCPR is concerned.

Really?

What's that?

First, Johnnie A. Maier, Jr., apparently, is going to have a general election opponent this year.  For The Report it is particularly good to see because Maier is an "old school" politico who sees political power in and of itself.  Power used to place in office those whose primary goal seems to be to have a public job.  The public good for these folks is an afterthought at best.  Moreover, The Report believes that Maier is a "divide and conquer" type politico for his personal political advantage.

Second, Ward 6 Councilman David K. McCune, it seems, is going to have opposition to retain his seat.  McCune generated a flap in Massillon over trying to get the administration of Frank Cicchinelli to "forgive" his daughter's handicap parking place ticket (which was refused), and, then got into a imbroglio with other Massillon councilpersons over his effort to get Massillon's timeline for paying parking tickets extended.  Problem was, he never told the chair of the appropriate committee (Kathy Catazaro-Perry) about the personal element to his pursuit.

Third, it could be that there is going to be a Republican candidate for council-at-large that may be a threat to Democratic dominance at that level.

ON THE MAIER RACE

In 2005, Stark County Democratic kingpin Maier was challenged by Republican Megan Todaro.  Well, it wasn't much of a race as Maier swamped Todaro.

One would think that Maier would have been happy to win and just let it go at it.  But not Maier, he took offense that Todaro had the gall to run against him.  From a blog of May 5, 2009:

Hopefully, the passage of 6 years will make Todaro-Kirchner more competitive.  The SCPR believes that Massillon would be a whole lot better off if Maier was not part of the political mix in Massillon.  Undoubtedly, the mayor would at least "privately" say amen! to that.  One has to wonder as to whether or not Cicchinelli will be lurking in the background rooting for Todaro-Kirchner. 

ON McCUNE

When one acts the way McCune did on the handicap parking incident, the remedy is for voters to remove the politician from office.  The SCPR has the feeling that McCune is a political bully.  It is wonderful to see that there is a possibility of opposition come November.  It would be icing on the cake if a Democrat were to surface to take him on in May.


ON COUNCIL-AT-LARGE

If only Massillon Republicans could elect someone citywide for any office, it would be good for Massillon just to give a political competition (not Democrat fighting with one another) factor at play.

However, the mayoralty does not look likely and probably not even the clerk of courts race (which probably includes more than just the city).  Perhaps, council-at-large?

Chovan appears to be a serious candidate.  He has a website up and running in which he deals more with issues than personalities.

So if Massillonians would vote Maier out, an opponent to McCune in and, perhaps, a Republican councilman-at-large to boot, then maybe things would change for the better in Tigerland?