Posted on 09/13/2006 12:58:22 PM PDT by calcowgirl
By Jack O’Connell’s count, Phil Angelides has called 10 times to ask for his help since winning the primary and 10 times O’Connell has said yes.
O’Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction who lives in San Luis Obispo, has appeared alongside the Democratic gubernatorial candidate at events to highlight Angelides’ education platform. He traveled around the state with Angelides on his Labor Day campaign blitz. He also organized a successful Central Coast fund-raiser.
Between now and November, O’Connell says, he intends to do everything he can to help Angelides get elected because having him as governor "would make my job easier."
But O’Connell, alone among all other elected officials in the state, also must deal this fall with another political concern. By winning the majority of the vote in the June primary, he was elected to his second and final term as state superintendent. For him, the inevitable next question has already arisen: What next?
I asked him that question last week, and O’Connell put other Democrats on notice: If Angelides loses in November to Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack O’Connell intends to be a candidate for governor in 2010.
"That’s where my interest is," O’Connell told me. "There’s still a lot of things I want to do, and the best way to do them is as governor."
If Schwarzenegger wins re-election this fall, he will be termed out in 2010, creating an open seat that will be a magnet for just about any Democratic officeholder you can name, starting with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Controller Steve Westly, who could well make a second run at the nomination after having fallen just short this June.
Depending on the outcomes of the down-ticket elections in November, add John Garamendi, Bill Lockyer and former Gov. Jerry Brown to the list.
O’Connell, assured of holding office for the next four years and with no campaign standing between him and 2010, is taking advantage of that distinction by positioning himself high on the list that will quickly begin to form if Schwarzenegger wins.
In that event, said O’Connell’s political strategist Gale Kaufman, "I would predict that Nov. 10 would not be too soon to begin the inevitable game of ‘Who’s running in 2010?’ The fact that Jack is positioning himself now doesn’t negate what he’s doing to help Phil."
O’Connell captured 2.1 million votes in June, or 52.4 percent of the vote in a six-candidate contest, without bothering to wage a paid campaign. That took care of current political business.
Villaraigosa, on the other hand, cannot overtly talk about aspirations for governor, since he must run for re-election as mayor in 2009. Ditto for Newsom in San Francisco in 2007.
Garamendi, Lockyer and Brown have to spend this fall focused on their own campaigns for state office. Westly will leave office in January and will be a private citizen for the next four years.
That leaves O’Connell, for the moment, as the first and only potential 2010 gubernatorial candidate free to talk about the possibilities.
To be sure, there are questions about his viability. Could a kid from Oxnard compete for name ID against the mayor of America’s second-largest city? Is it possible to move up from state superintendent to governor? Could he raise the tens of millions of dollars it would take?
Garry South, the campaign strategist who twice helped elect Gray Davis and who managed Westly’s campaign, said O’Connell would start with one big advantage.
"He’s one of the best campaigners I’ve ever met," South said. "You don’t get elected governor going to picnics and barbecues in a state this large, but when you are out there people have to take a liking to you. And Jack’s a very likeable guy."
South said one challenge would be to run for governor from a single-issue office. "There’s a disadvantage to having only one issue under your purview," he said. "If you run as superintendent of public instruction, people are going to ask, ‘Are the schools any better?"’
O’Connell believes that education is and will remain the No. 1 issue for Democratic voters. Still, he notes that in the next four years he intends to use his office to highlight some other issues as well - for example, using his position on the State Teachers Retirement System board to help develop more efficient and affordable ways of providing healthcare.
One other reason O’Connell is free to talk about possible long-range plans is that he recently received good news on the home front. His wife, Doree, who underwent brain surgery this spring to remove a cancerous tumor, received her second straight clean MRI last month and remains cancer-free.
"Everybody I’ve talked to has been encouraging," O’Connell told me.
Doree was first on that list.
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo! )
Here's hoping that McClintock can beat this standard-issue, big-spending liberal.
It's amazing to me that the super of public schools in CA would even dare show his face in public,much less run for office.
There hasn't been a decent Schools Chief in California since the late Max Rafferty.
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