After 22 years, Don Plusquellic found himself in the fight of his mayoral life when critic Warner Mendenhall launched an attempt to recall him. The following is from Chapter 14: “Recall and Rebellion” and from the Afterword.
Mayoral politics as blood sport was spreading across the land, and Don Plusquellic found himself on the leading edge of this painful trend.
With 38 states providing for municipal recalls, in April 2011 Governing magazine categorized most as: “anticorruption campaigns; citizen grassroots movements fighting a particular issue; and old political battles that are being rehashed.” [Warner] Mendenhall’s recall attempt smelled strongly of the latter, with an infusion of tired grass roots.
The attempt to recall Plusquellic attracted national attention. It was not every day a nationally respected former president of the U.S. Conference Mayors found himself in a fight for his job.
In 2009, Plusquellic was one of 23 mayors to face recall attempts according to Ballotpedia, which tracks recall elections. The next year the number grew to 57. Only five succeeded in 2009 and 15 in 2010.
In most instances, including in Plusquellic’s case, the recall attempts were not born from allegations of criminal wrongdoing or scandal. Mendenhall based his assertion that Plusquellic should be removed from office on the city’s debt level, the manner in which the mayor used city credit cards for travel and other expenses, and Plusquellic’s behavior, which Mendenhall deemed offensive.
His group [Change Akron Now] also filed a lawsuit contending Plusquellic had violated city campaign contributions limits. Mendenhall had done this to no avail five years earlier. Editorial Writer Steve Hoffman, who covered politics, labeled it tired stuff. The product of direct democracy, it seems, is only as good as its authors — and one of Akron’s principal ones was writing a new chapter with the recall.
When Mendenhall turned in petitions with a thousand more signatures than the 3,179 required to prompt a recall election, he was practically giddy. He had done his homework and calculated correctly that the low signature threshold — 20 percent of those who voted in the most recent mayoral election — would never be easier to meet.
After beating [Joe] Finley [in the Democratic primary], Plusquellic had no 2007 general election opponent. No opponent, no voter interest. It was the perfect set of circumstances for Mendenhall to take another crack at The Don.
Against the judgment of his political advisors, Plusquellic went after Mendenhall directly, as if Mendenhall were a campaign opponent. As Mendenhall had predicted, it turned into a bare-knuckle fight, including exposing the issues Mendenhall knew made him vulnerable to attacks on his credibility.
First, the Beacon Journal wrote about state and federal tax liens against Mendenhall and wife Kelly and about an outstanding child support payment that Mendenhall had satisfied only after a lien was filed.
At the same time, the Citizens for Akron group opposed to the recall sent out a mailer that “busted” Mendenhall, labeling him a “tax cheat and ‘deadbeat dad’ who ‘wants you [the taxpayer] to foot the bill for his personal political ambitions.’ ”
The bipartisan group, headed by former Mayor Tom Sawyer and former Republican Councilman John Frank, estimated a potential cost of $725,000 for three special elections if the recall succeeded. The figure included $525,000 for the elections and $200,000 the city had been forced to spend to satisfy the public records requests of anti-recall advocates.
Mendenhall complained the mailer was “libelous.” He objected to being called a “deadbeat dad” when he had rectified what he claimed was a child support payment that he did not know he had not made. (He made no mention of the lien filed.) He also took issue with being labeled a “tax cheat” when, he contended, many small business owners find themselves facing similar tax liens.
In explaining two federal income tax liens totaling $169,000, according to the Internal Revenue Service, Mendenhall, both at the time and during an interview three years later, attributed his tax-payment shortfall to putting first his obligation to meet the payroll of his small law office. No one, including the media, challenged this explanation.
Plusquellic, however, saw through it. “That’s bulls***,” he said. “His only tax liability is on the money he takes home. If he paid his people more, he wouldn’t have as big a tax liability.”
Attacking Don Plusquellic was heady stuff. It clouded judgment and affected reason. It caused Warner Mendenhall to plunge ahead with a blurred vision of Plusquellic and the city Mendenhall claimed the mayor was wrecking.
Tom Cochran, CEO and executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, had come to Akron to record this political bloodletting as the centerpiece of Recall Fever, which also featured recall efforts in Omaha, Nebraska, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. He interviewed Mendenhall and talked with others supporting Change Akron Now. If it proved enlightening for Cochran, it was even more baffling to him, as he discovered many mayoral recall efforts to be.
“God almighty, what he was saying!” marveled the flabbergasted Cochran about his conversation with Mendenhall. “It was very difficult for me to accept what he was saying about Don. He was very personal about a lot of things.
“It was very clear to me that he had a personal political agenda. I got the impression that he wanted to be mayor.”
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[Six years later in 2015] as [Don Plusquellic] pondered which ending he would write to his mayoralty, [he] admitted that had Mendenhall not initiated his 2009 recall attempt, the ending might have come at the conclusion of his sixth term in 2011.
Plusquellic had suffered a siege of self-pity from his failed 2007 tax proposal, his close call in the 2007 Democratic primary, and his scholarship funding beatdown. “I just needed time to feel sorry for myself,” he said.
As he took that time, Plusquellic confided to friends, including Summit County Executive Russ Pry, that “maybe people have just had their fill of me” and perhaps it was time to leave office. The public did not seem to be listening to him or following his lead as it once had.
“If that dumbass Mendenhall hadn’t overplayed his hand,” Plusquellic said, “I might very well have walked away.”
The recall attempt changed everything.
“It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull,” Plusquellic said. “No f***ing way are you going to drive me out of my town.”