Turn out the lights, Warner. The party's over

IT DIDN'T TAKE long after the polls closed Tuesday night to learn that Warner Mendenhall's drive-by drill team had been drubbed by the voters. Word spread quickly around the packed rally crowd at Musica downtown that Mayor Plusquellic had not only survived the farcical recall election but also did so with such overwhelming 3-to-1 authority that perhaps only Mendenhall and the night gab-guy on WNIR would sulkingly still consider it close enough for a recount.

Actually, still on his white horse after the final vote was in, Mendenhall emerged at his base, the Country something-or-other restaurant, to declare a moral victory by sending an important message to City Hall that would "change the future of the city" As he had during the entire ludicrous campaign against the mayor, he was still talking in riddles. What message might he be referring to? Was this the beleaguered football coach trying to incite his team to play harder after a 45-0 halftime deficit?

On the other hand, I didn't find a single Plusquellic supporter who had anticipated the wide margin of victory. When Dave Lieberth, the mayor's right-hand man and factotum at City Hall, was asked if were surprised, he could only nod that he was, while adding that he believed the mayor would survive, but added cautiously: "One never knows." County Executive Russ Pry and City Council President Marco Sommerville, also appeared to be sorting out the impressive showing by the mayor. Pry said the Mendenhall campaign was a "speed bump" when government should be concentrating on the more serious business at hand. "When you go through a campaign like this, it takes a lot of energy and time," Pry said. Sommerville handed the challenge back to Mendenhall, asserting: "The people have spoken. He (Mendenhall) says he listens to the people. We'll see...."

But it was the mayor himself who wrote the campaign's epilogue, reviving his plain-spoken cut-to-the-bone ways as he addressed the throng. He slashed at the "false statements" from the other side while conceding that he could be wrong on some issues but would never retreat from his commitment as a determined leader "to continue to be strong and continue to fight for the citizens of Akron."

Several people mentioned that one of the problems with the Mendenhall assault is that a mayoral recall election was the first in the city's history and nobody had any experience in addressing it. In some ways it was a a grimy underground protest campaign, word of mouth, full of sound and fury in certain precincts, , and as the Bard of Avon once wrote, "signifying nothing." Mendenhall cost the city's taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of it in time spent by city workers to research records sought by his forces. And what did he prove by all of this? Only that there was nothing to be proved.

Get over it, Warner. You lost, doubtless in a way that startled even you. Now try hard to become a good citizen like the kind that you want everybody else to be.

P.S. If you accomplished anything . Warner, with yesterday's numbers, you doubtless have made the mayor a much stronger candidate for his next election campaign. Sometimes you have to be careful about what you wish for, you may get it in ways that you never anticipated.

Mendenhall:Recall charades; Obama's choice; Norm Coleman

WHY DOES Warner Mendenhall, the unelected recall leader,  repeatedly insist, as he did in the Plain Dealer, that he does not have a  vendetta against Mayor Plusquellic  and then go on to assert: "This man is a danger against the community."?    Doesn't that connect the dots?   It sure does, and for that , I will give him a Grumpy Abe  Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award.  He also buzzed that he would be happy with anybody but Plusquellic at City Hall.  Question: How do you act out vendetta in charades?   Warner, you should have first paid up your tax liens to Uncle Sam before spending  foolishly on a white horse.   

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Keeping up-to-date:  From the June issue of  Harper's (magazine)  Index:

• Rank of Texas among states with the nation's highest teen-pregnancy rates: 3. 

• Percentage of Texas public-school districts that teach abstinence as their only form of sex education: 94.     

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Sweetness from Norm Coleman, who has obtusely held his state of Minnesota hostage for seven months while refusing to concede  his defeat in last November's Senate race by Democrat Al Franken.  He has issued a statement saying that when he is "re-elected" he will be fair in judging President Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor!  All of this nonsense despite polls showing  about two-thirds of Minnesota voters want him to pack up and head for wherever losing senators go.   

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With the certain uproar from the right's Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan and the GOP's backup crew of choristers over Obama's Supreme Court nominee,  it would be well for him to recall the words of  Joe Greene, the fearsome all-pro Pittsburgh Steelers tackle, who once spoke of the pathway to success:  "When you have your opponent down, you keep 'em down." The president's critics need only to do the math from the November election.      

                    

A big mop for Wacko America

MOPPING UP:

  Although it would be an insult to serious forensics, do you believe that if Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell debated, they would both lose? 

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A salute to the GOP fixer pro tem, Dick Cheney,  for having a practical response to the right-wing furor over President Obama's socialistic teleprompter.  If you saw the former Veep's  talk to the American Enterprise Institute, you'll note that he dispatched the hated teleprompter the old-fashioned way.  With head down and nose pointed down to the lectern,  he read every word from his printed text.  Or was it a hidden conservative  teleprompter? 

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       The roar of the anti-global warming crowd (read: anti-science)  continues unabated, raising the specter of soaring fuel costs managed by that tyrant, President Obama.   The fuel cost warning isn't new; the alarmist slandering of Obama on the environment by the hard core Republican base on the right went into high gear with his election last November.  As vitriolic as the attacks on environmental concerns might be, some spectators are also reduced to sophomoric cutesy pie humor.  Examples abound.  But the most convenient one unfortunately arrived on my breakfast table yesterday from Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O'Brien, an apparent firm believer in church but not state.  Complaining about Obama's projected fuel-efficiency standards, O'Brien blithely  opined: "Obama likes the idea because it is  his."  

 

         Kevin, my boy, where have you been?  Obama's "idea" of fuel conservation  has been around for a long time with variations on the same theme.  A friendly reminder:   You like the thoughts in your column because they are yours, and I like the thoughts in my blogs because they are mine.   That is hardly something I learned in my high school science class.   By my standards, it's a tested evolutionary theory, if you know what I mean.  

    

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With nearly a month until the Akron mayoral recall election, brace yourself for a furious assault on Don Plusquellic with the sort of reckless statements that appeared in a letter to the  Beacon Journal from Warner Mendenhall's neighborhood pal.  Among the badly aimed shots was a new one to me:  That Plusquellic was responsible for a public  school system  that is a "sham, "  thereby forcing "good citizens" to pay "exorbitant fees above their property taxes to send their children to private schools."  Excuse me, but when did the mayor become the CEO of the public school system that has always been the responsibility of the system's  superintendent and duly elected school board? Folks, we're in for a siege of revisionist history, I'm afraid.