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.
Leaning back in his leather seat, he insists that the exit exam, which he sponsored as a state senator in 1999 and has championed as superintendent, is just "one of many accomplishments" in the last 3 1/2 years. He says he has maintained high standards of student accountability, pushed "career and technical education" -- the modern version of vocational classes -- and tried to reduce the "achievement gap" that occurs when poor students, especially African Americans and Latinos, perform at levels below those of affluent students, especially whites and Asian Americans.
It is hard to find anyone who personally dislikes O'Connell, who exudes down-to-earth warmth and self-deprecating humor. (During a high school visit, he approaches a student wearing earphones and asks what he's listening to. "Jazz," the student says. "I knew it wasn't my last speech because you're still awake," O'Connell says.)
And, for the most part, his educational initiatives have won bipartisan support.
Although the post of superintendent is nonpartisan and typically has been held by educators, not politicians, O'Connell is a Democrat who served for 20 years in the Legislature, as both an assemblyman and senator representing the Central Coast.
Still, he is praised by some Republicans for his dogged defense of the exit exam -- which was challenged in court, thrown out by a judge and then reinstated last week by the state Supreme Court. This year for the first time the exam is a requirement for graduation from public high school in California. Democrats support him as an effective superintendent who has spoken out about the need to increase funding for education, especially for struggling students in poor urban communities.
State Sen. Jack Scott (D-Pasadena), a former president of Pasadena City College who heads the Senate Education Committee, said he supported O'Connell because he has been "a very, very strong advocate for increasing funding for the schools, but also for educational reform."
Still, O'Connell has his critics.
The exit exam has angered many educators, parents and, of course, students -- especially the roughly 10% of high school seniors who haven't passed the test and might not receive their diplomas in June. (Some of them have not yet received their scores from the last time the exam was administered.)
Conservatives have complained that O'Connell is too beholden to teachers unions, which have been strong supporters of his campaigns. And there are those who say that while O'Connell might be affable, he is someone you might hire to renovate a home, not rebuild its foundations.
