Candidate’s 2nd Place Finish Elates Green Party

As state superintendent of public instruction, Jack O’Connell had the power of incumbency in his reelection bid -- that, and an untapped, $1-million campaign fund, which was about $1 million more than all four of his little-known challengers could muster collectively.

O’Connell is an amiable and well-liked figure, and had been in the news recently for accomplishing one of his major goals in office: requiring students to pass an exit exam to graduate from high school.

So why, with all that going for him, did O’Connell come within 2 percentage points in Tuesday’s primary of getting thrown into a fall runoff? And how is it that his top challenger was a Los Angeles public schoolteacher and Green Party activist whose campaign biography identifies her as a member of the International Socialist Organization?

Not only did Sarah Knopp come close to forcing O’Connell into a statewide fall runoff, but she got more votes than any Green Party member has ever gotten in a California election -- in fact, party officials said, more than any Green has ever gotten in any statewide race in the country.

Note the careful wording: Knopp was not a Green Party candidate, any more than O’Connell, a Democrat, was his party’s candidate, because the superintendent’s post is officially nonpartisan. Still, Green Party officials were exulting over her strong showing -- she received 569,000 votes, or 17% of the total -- and talking about her as a big part of the party’s future.

“It was a surprise,” said party spokesman Crescenzo Vellucci. Green Party leaders knew Knopp was a good candidate, he said, but had no idea she would attract far more support than the party’s previous top vote-getter, Laura Wells, who got 420,000 votes -- 5.8% -- in a 2002 race for state controller.

Diane Lenning of Huntington Beach, a more conservative rival to O’Connell, finished third in Tuesday’s primary with 14% of the vote.

O’Connell, a former state senator from San Luis Obispo who has been a champion of standardized testing and stiffer graduation requirements, may have been the near-victim of voter disenchantment with the state of public education in California. A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found voters in a foul mood about education, with nearly two-thirds saying the quality of public schools is a major problem for the state.

And he undoubtedly paid a price for his fierce defense of the high school exit exam, a battle he ultimately won in court last month after opponents said the test unfairly penalized English language learners and students in low-performing schools.

Knopp was in the best position among the four challengers to take advantage of any discontent over the test. Her ballot statement and website stressed her opposition to standardized testing, saying it threatened to turn public schools into “teach-to-the-test drill camps” that “suck the joy out of education.”

Knopp, who was endorsed by author Jonathan Kozol and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), did especially well in counties with a strong liberal bent and sizable Green Party constituency. She got just under 25% of the vote in Humboldt County, which Vellucci said is the strongest Green county in the state. The San Pedro resident also got nearly 20% of the vote in Los Angeles County.

Knopp said she thought she did well in part because, in a nonpartisan race, there was no stigma to being a Green Party candidate.

Still, she said, she also benefited from party support. She is also active in the immigrant rights movement and said she believed she received some support as a result of that.

Given the challenges, O’Connell’s press secretary insisted, the incumbent did well.

“We were really pleased,” said Rick Miller. “A lot of people were not optimistic that we were going to get over 50%. The reality is, it’s a down-ticket ballot that a lot of people don’t pay attention to until the last minute.” Asked why O’Connell didn’t tap his campaign fund, Miller said campaign officials preferred to save the money for a runoff race, if one was required.

Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic political consultant who ran O’Connell’s 2002 election campaign, said he was surprised that the superintendent won outright on Tuesday.

He noted that O’Connell’s predecessor, Delaine Eastin, wound up in a runoff with a lesser-known candidate, teacher Gloria Matta Tuchman, during her reelection bid in 1998. Eastin won the November runoff.

The fact that Knopp did well in relatively liberal counties, and Lenning -- the only registered Republican in the race -- did well in relatively conservative counties suggests that voters paid close attention to ballot statements and the few news accounts about the relatively unheralded race, Carrick added.

“It is an interesting phenomenon,” he said. “It may, in fact, be an encouraging, positive comment on the electorate.”