In the security line at the Sacramento airport, Jack O'Connell keeps seeing people he knows. Here comes a former finance chief for Gov. Gray Davis. There's a former assemblyman and mayor of Sacramento.
Kicking off his black-tasseled loafers, O'Connell passes through the metal detector. At the gate for the Southwest Airlines flight to Santa Ana, more friends: a prominent political strategist. An assistant to the state education secretary.
O'Connell, who is running for reelection as state superintendent of public instruction, is in his element. It's an airport, and few people know California's airports better than he does. And it's Sacramento, where he has been in the thick of political life for more than two decades.
He appears unflappable even when the subject turns -- as it inevitably does in every social encounter these days -- to the one issue overshadowing O'Connell's job as the state's top education official and his less-than-stressful campaign.
"How's Doree?" people keep asking, a reference to his wife of more than 25 years, who recently underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor.
"Doin' better," he'll say, and give the thumbs-up sign.
If it weren't for his wife's illness, these would be happy days for O'Connell. As he heads into the June 6 election, his opposition consists of three high school teachers and a retired school superintendent who have failed to attract the money or political support needed to mount an effective statewide campaign. The only political insider to consider the race, Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Roseville), backed out after concluding that he couldn't win.
And after several years of laboring in relative obscurity -- at least, for someone whose job involves setting overall policy for the largest statewide educational system in the country -- O'Connell has lately been in the national spotlight as a defender of California's high school exit exam.
Boarding the plane, the nearly 6-foot-4 O'Connell settles into a front-row seat after determining that savvy passengers have already snagged his favorite spot in an exit row. Few people travel around California as much as O'Connell, who frequently has days like this one -- with visits to a Northern California school in the morning and a Southern California school in the afternoon, meetings along the way and a political fundraiser in the evening.
