O’Connell Gets Issues on the Table

Streetscape, 1982: Jack O’Connell, his card table, a line of passersby eager to buttonhole the new assemblyman.

Streetscape, 1999: Jack O’Connell, his card table, a line of passersby eager to buttonhole the veteran state senator.

If you can count on nothing else, you can count on the card table. O’Connell has been trundling it through his district for so long it’s become as much a part of local street life as a farmers market or a “For Lease” sign.

The card table: symbol or substance, sizzle or steak, public-relations gimmick or grass-roots democracy? But if it brings the people’s government to the people, what difference do such distinctions make anyway? For what else is a canny politician’s battered old card table but a platform set upon some well-worn shticks?

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O’Connell came up with the idea during his first campaign, back in the Iron Age. At 31, he had been a legislative aide whose public profile consisted mainly of teaching government at Oxnard High School. He was being outspent more than 2 to 1 by millionaire Republican Brooks Firestone, so maybe vowing to set up outdoor card-table hours throughout his prospective district didn’t seem like such a crazy idea.

The amazing thing is that he actually did it, and kept to it for the following 17 years. Regardless of season, weather, proximity to the press, length of time until the next election, or the demands of his increasingly powerful jobs in Sacramento’s baroque bureaucracy. O’Connell sets up his table somewhere in his three-county district at least a couple of times a month.

He’s on his second table now. The first was so beaten up that an Ojai constituent donated hers to the cause about five years ago. In full operation, it’s covered with contact paper and the kind of pamphlets (“Managing Household Toxic Waste”) that government people like to call “literature.” It too looks to be on its last legs.

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But when O’Connell and a couple of aides set it up, the people come--aggrieved, angry, concerned, curious, lost, eager to sputter or just to say hello.

Last week in downtown Ventura, a man upset about prosecutors cracking down on deadbeat dads started stating his case calmly enough.

A half-minute into his recitation, his eyes were bulging.

In another minute, he was bellowing:

“There ought to be a law on the books protecting men!”

“There is a law on the books,” O’Connell said, speaking with the studied calm of a pilot announcing there might be just a touch of bumpiness in the hurricane up ahead.

After a couple of minutes of outrage, the man stalked off without satisfaction.

“The trouble with you is you’ve got the feminist point of view!” he yelled back at O’Connell.

The other supplicants were quieter but no less passionate.

Clutching a copy of Scientific American with an article about the millennium bug, Al Cruz said he was worried about Y2K.

“It’s a matter of confidence,” he said, “and right now mine isn’t very high.”

He asked O’Connell whether the National Guard would be mobilized.

“That’s a good question,” O’Connell said, promising to get back to Cruz with an answer after an upcoming meeting of state emergency officials.

A bartender had a question about the treatment of the homeless in downtown Ventura. A young man who said he was a “mental health patient” asked about the aborted merger of two county health-care agencies.

Dave and Andrea Faulkner--he’s retired from Camarillo State Hospital and she from the California Youth Authority--asked why it’s taking so long to clean up the mess at the youth prison in Camarillo.

“Yes, the governor’s been a little slow in his appointments, but the ones he’s named have been quality,” O’Connell said. “Give it a month or two. You’re going to see some big changes out there--the whole system will be changing.”

Andrea was pleased with O’Connell’s response.

“I didn’t expect him to have all the answers,” she said. “But I felt good when he told me there would be changes down the line. I mean, I was always proud to say I was a state employee. Now people look at you and say, ‘Oh my God . . .’ ”

Lawrence and Lori Anderson, publishers of an underground comic book called “Renaissance on Main Street,” complained to O’Connell about the filming of movies in their rural neighborhood near Casitas Dam.

“We’re not opposed to it,” Lawrence said, “but we just want a little notice before they start crashing cars and landing helicopters. We just don’t like to be forgotten.” A couple of days later, the Andersons--who gleefully noted that they never see the mayor at a downtown card table--received a call about the filming from a county employee.

“The lady said, ‘We got your letter, Mr. Anderson.’ But I didn’t send them a letter. The senator’s little table may have worked.”

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“The beauty is that you never know who’s going to come by,” O’Connell said.

At 47, he finally has outgrown the look of eager young student council president. In a double-breasted blue blazer and gray flannel pants, he now looks more like the student council’s eager young faculty advisor.

He says he loves being out in the fresh air and sunshine. He doesn’t recall specific bills or positions inspired by his street-corner encounters, but the process is enlightening nonetheless: “It’s a good barometer for me,” he said. “It’s a heads-up.”

His old basketball coach from Ventura College sometimes drops by. Old family friends drop by. Fellow politicos--even some from the Republican camp--drop by.

One old GOP friend waltzed over and announced she’d moved to the far reaches of his district in Ojai.

“Reapportionment!” O’Connell snapped to an aide. “Cut Ojai from the district!”

Then he turned to me: “I’m kidding!” he insisted. “I’m kidding!”

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.