Akron mayor annihilates enemies -- thanks to Chrissie Hynde?

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic completely routed and demolished his longtime enemies yesterday, racking up about 75 percent of the vote against a scrappy effort to recall him.

"We will never, ever make a certain percentage of this community happy," Plusquellic said in his victory speech. "If we dwell on them, if we let them set our agenda, God help us."

Supporters of the charismatic, antagonistic mayor crowed. "We're not only rockin', we're rollin'," developer Tony Troppe told the Akron Beacon Journal. "It's the Don show."

Why did Plusquellic win? His forces ruthlessly attacked recall organizer Warner Mendenhall, who has a longtime feud with the mayor. They sent mailings about Mendenhall's tax problems and labeled the recall organizers a "band of radicals."

Scott Piepho, on his blog Pho's Akron Pages, calls the anti-Plusquellic effort incoherent. "The nature of the recall campaign allows each discontented resident to project his particular gripe onto the Mayor," he wrote. "Trying to take on the recall argument is no easy task." Piepho kept calling the recall campaign "Team Mulligan" for its bad aim.

I wonder if it's even simpler than that.

Plusquellic had Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders on his side. Check out the video above, in which Hynde alludes to "My City Was Gone," her classic song about Akron, as a way of saying (I think) that Plusquellic has helped bring it back.

Mendenhall, meanwhile, had "Miss Tia, Kent State University history major, resident of North Hill" -- who, according to the Beacon, once had her phone number listed under the name of Squeaky Fromme, the Charles Manson follower who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford.

No contest!