The Inside Scoop

Our faithful readers are the backbone of the Massillon Review. As we begin 2011, which is an election year for Massillon government, our readers have been keeping us updated from the rumor mill. We share some of their insights today.

"Reorganizing" the School Board

There are three seats up on the Massillon Board of Education this year.

Gary Miller, President Weinberg, and Vicki Becherucci must all stand for re-election.

This trio was elected in 2007.

Gary Miller was the top vote getter with 3,468 votes.
President Weinberg was second with 2,748 votes (720 votes behind Miller).
Vicki Becherucci finished third with 2,662 votes.

The 'Friends of the Program' football boosters haven't given up on their plan to "reorganize" the athletic department, making the head football the athletic director, and making one of the assistant coaches the assistant athletic director, officially putting football at the top of the pyramid. With Superintendent Carmichael seeking an exit strategy, the football faction is one school board vote away from running the school system. According to several of our readers, look for the football guys to run a female candidate for school board, who is in sync with their plans for reorganization, in order to bump Becherucci out of her seat.

Becherucci is not real popular in the community at this point any way, and a number of people believe she has used her school board seat to help her family get jobs in the school district. We don't believe she will be hard to beat.

Second Ward Carpetbagger

Last year, Massillon's Mayor for Life drew a 'line in the sand.' He stated that 'carpetbaggers' should not involve themselves in Massillon city politics. He stated at his press conference, where he announced he was running for a seventh term as mayor for life that, "People that live in Massillon should decide who their mayor should be, who their council member should be. They shouldn't be influenced by anyone on the outside..."

We agreed.

And we called out the carpetbaggers.

Carpetbaggers like the mayor's campaign contributors, the mayor's department heads, and the mayor's advertising agency. Carpetbaggers.

We now call out a Ward 2 carpetbagger. Massillon's Mayor for Life, Frank Cicchinelli, a resident of council ward 4.

Frank Cicchinelli has personally recruited Kevin Phillips to run against 2nd Ward councilman Gary Anderson. We believe Cicchinelli will be intimately involved in Kevin Phillips' campaign. And if Phillips wins, we all know how he will vote. One of our readers claims that Cicchinelli even drove Phillips to the election board to get his candidate petition.

People in Ward 2 should decide who their councilman should be. They shouldn't be influenced by outsiders. They shouldn't be influenced by carpetbaggers like Frank Cicchinelli.

The Comeback

Rumor is that former Massillon Clerk of Courts Ed Radel is contemplating a comeback for his old job, by running against Johnnie Maier.

Remember Ed Radel? When he left, his office was technologically in the stone age. As a matter of fact, his computer network was the only network between here and Kazakhstan that wasn't Y2K compliant. Remember Y2K?

"Some court officials, such as Judge Edward Elum, are saying Radel did not do all he could to make certain computers would pass through the change of the year without any record keeping glitches. (The Repository, January 5, 2000). "He (Radel) left us in a mess" (Judge Edward Elum, The Repository, January 5, 2000).

According to one of our readers, Radel's facebook page claims that he already is the Clerk of Courts. Sounds pretty optimistic.

Our guess is that Johnnie Maier isn't losing sleep over this one.

The Rubber Stamps

In 2009, the last city election, eight of the nine members of Massillon City Council ran unopposed. Not so this time. According to the Stark County Election Board web site, Ward 6 councilman David 'I am the Law' McCune has a Republican challenger.

In Ward 5, Donnie Peters has two Democratic challengers vying for the right to bump him off, and it looks like Taxman Hersher is about to go extinct as Kathy Catazaro-Perry will probably separate him from his council at large position.

Our Mayor for Life has recruited a challenger against Gary Anderson in Ward 2, and according to several of our readers, look for Ward 1 rubber stamp Ron Mang to have both a Democratic and Republican opponent.

Things should be livelier this election than the last one.

We thank our faithful readers for always keeping us in the loop.