It was 20 years ago Wednesday that Don Plusquellic was first inaugurated Mayor of Akron. He was City Council President at the time and inherited the job when then Mayor Tom Sawyer left office to go to Congress. One of the first things he did as mayor was work with local supporters to attract the National Inventors Hall of Fame to Akron. In that hall, with school kids working in the background, he announced that he's running for reelection. Plusquellic told the crowd that Akron, like the other cities of Northeast Ohio , was in a tailspin 20 years ago.
Don Plusquellic: We've been able to change this city, change the image, change the ability to go out and market our community in a way to be able to bring new business in with the help of the Chamber and other business interests; we have made a difference.
Plusquellic has long gotten involved in issues outside his city and said he doesn't plan now to sit in his office. He spent half of 2004 and 2005 as the President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, he's traveled overseas numerous times on trade missions, yet says he hasn't lost the commitment and enthusiasm of being mayor of his hometown.
Don Plusquellic: The same kind of drive that took me this past weekend, when some others were celebrating and doing some things out in some places that probably many of you have never driven, a place where I thought I was going to get arrested driving to look for a business opportunity to place a business that had contacted us just last week. But it's the kind of things that I still enjoy doing.
Plusquellic says he was urged this past year to run for Congress or governor or county executive. Just last February he publicly admitted he felt guilty for not running for Governor. He said he feared that Democrats might lose, saying the Republican legislature has been vindictively anti-city.
Don Plusquellic: I know that the outcome for the citizens of Ohio, had Strickland not won, would have been devastating. I don't know that we would have ever climbed out of that hole.
Your focus has been on issues much bigger than the City of Akron. Is it going to be hard to focus on things like plowing the streets and things like that?
Don Plusquellic: No. We were doing things differently in the police department and things like that while I was president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. I'm working on reaching out and meeting a local businessman who had some concerns at the same time and on a parallel path when I'm introducing Kofi Annan at the United Nations - in the same week. That's part of the mayor's responsibility to do more than one thing.
Plusquellic said he will continue to fight to attract foreign investment to his city while at the same time labor over issues like trash collection. The 57-year-old said he learned from his father's early death and his own open heart surgery three years ago that he doesn't want to waste time. Plusquellic may see his first serious primary challenge since he first ran. Democratic City Councilman Michael Williams, an African American, is reportedly considering a run.