Akron's Plusquellic, ever-feisty, running for 7th term

The Don is in no mood to retire.

The long-serving, short-tempered mayor of Akron announced today that he's taking a shot at a seventh term.

Don Plusquellic, mayor since 1987, said it wasn't an easy decision -- his children tried to convince him not to run. But as I wrote in the Power 100 issue of Inside Business, Plusquellic has trouble walking away from a fight. He wants to erase the memory of his near-loss in 2007, and he wants to be the guy who conquers the city's serious budget problems.

That means Akron City Hall will remain an exciting place: four more years* of Plusquellic's Sinatra-esque "my way" politics. Four more years of feuds with the Akron cops and the motley crew that tried to recall him in 2009. And maybe even another campaign appearance and endorsement by Chrissie Hynde.

Plusquellic was as combative as ever in his press conference today (covered by Bill Sheil of Fox 8). He addressed his never-ending union-negotiation struggles with the police thusly:

[Should I say,] here, take more and more, and I'll just sit back and let you fill out your own paychecks? Somebody has to stand-up. Is that polarization? I'll let you choose what word you use. But you can't in this world be successful with the 20-something percent of people who are always against everything.

Those 20-plus percenters* may coalesce around councilman and Don-rival Mike Williams, the Beacon Journal thinks.

*Update, March: Brent Larkin thinks another term for The Don is far from a sure thing. "Friends of Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic fear he will have a tough time winning," Larkin writes at the bottom of this column.

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!