Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

Primary Election Day has come and gone in the City of Champions.

The preliminaries are over as Tiger Town readies itself for the political rematch of the century, the main event of the election season, Cicchinelli vs. Catazaro-Perry II, The War to Settle the Score.

Voter turnout in Massillon yesterday was absolutely dismal as less than 2,300 Democratic voters cast a ballot in the mayor's race.

Shameful. We can certainly do better!

Cicchinelli surrogate J. David Ress benefited from the abysmally low turnout, grabbed the Cicchinelli loyalist support, which would never miss an election, and ran the incumbent mayor reasonably close.

In November, however, there will be no more surrogate. The Extraordinary One will be back, warts and all, to undertake the battle his stalking horse began.

City Democrats were indeed in a feisty mood as they dumped two out of the three council members running for re-election.

Cicchinelli loyalist Jill Creamer, who, with the help of the Cicchinelli clan, has turned the homeowners around the Legends of Massillon Golf Course into a virtual political party, crushed incumbent Shaddrick Stinson.

Apparently Jill Creamer and her husband Matt, our former WHS Boys Basketball Head Coach, have forgiven The Extraordinary One for his alleged role in Creamer's departure as coach.

Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

To the collective disappointment of the Massillon Review,  Councilwoman Michelle Del Rio Keller lost an agonizingly close election to Catazaro-from-Perry loyalist Linda Litman.

Michelle Del Rio Keller is one of the few members of city council who brought real solutions to Massillon's problems. She wasn't political. She made tough decisions for the betterment of the entire community.

She is a true public servant.

We wish her well.

The question now becomes whether or not Massillon voters, all of Massillon's voters and not just a small cadre of Democratic loyalists, will return the keys to the kingdom to Team Cicchinelli.

Whatever happens, we imagine it will be quite the battle!