Jack O’Connell, California’s schools chief and Santa Barbara’s political favorite son, disclosed that he’s still weighing a possible run for governor, as he breezed through town a few days ago.

“I’m exploring it,” said the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who represented the area for 20 years in the Legislature. “The big obstacle is the money — I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

Chatting before he taped a TV interview on education for Santa Barbara Channels, O’Connell said that he is meeting with possible donors around the state to “line up commitments.” Though he has yet to form a committee to allow him to fundraise for governor, O’Connell in 2007 received a nearly $1 million independent expenditure boost from Netflix founder Reed Hastings to aid his explorations.

By now, though, the prospective 2010 Democratic field is crowded, with Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi and mayors Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa of San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively, expected to compete for the role of chief foil to front-runner and attorney general Jerry Brown, who’s seeking to win back at age 72 the office he first won at 36.

O’Connell, who’s termed out next year, said he would not seek any statewide office except governor, and plans a decision on running “sooner rather than later.”

Ventura Homeboy: Another politician to keep an eye on in the gubernatorial sweepstakes is Peter Foy, a Republican member of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

The conservative Foy is raising his statewide political profile, joining anti-tax crusaders Jon Koupal and Ted Costa as a cochair of the coalition opposing Proposition 1A on the May 19 special election ballot. The measure would restrict state spending, but also extend for two years $16 billion in tax increases approved in a Capitol deal to close the state’s deficit. In recent appearances, Foy has not exactly rushed to rule out blogospheric speculation about using his anti-1A post as a launching pad to run as the true-blue right-winger in the Republican primary for governor, with many party conservatives unhappy about their choices to date.

“You’ve heard rumors of me running for governor and I’ll be looking at that,” he recently told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci. “There’s a need for leadership in Sacramento.”

When I spoke with him this week, Foy openly criticized the efforts against 1A of Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman, the two wannabe governors most vying for GOP conservative support. Both oppose Prop. 1A, but Foy said they need to put some cash behind their words. “Poizner and Whitman should be throwing money at this,” he said. “You can say you’re against it, but I think the average person is going to say, ‘Where were you?’ We want someone on this who isn’t squishy.” Asked directly if he would run for governor, Foy said, “If that kind of leadership doesn’t rise up, then you bet I’ll take a long, hard look at that.”

Inside Baseball: There’s been a little behind-the-scenes jostling at the starting gate of the Democratic primary for the 35th Assembly District seat this week.

It started when I interviewed environmental advocate Susan Jordan and asked about comments that Santa Barbara City Councilmember Das Williams had made a few days earlier, when he had disclosed to The Independent he would challenge her for the seat. Williams told me then that he had met last year with Jordan and husband Pedro Nava, who’s vacating the seat, to tell them he would run, and had felt “intimidated” by the couple.

Thinking of a future column about Democratic infighting, I asked Jordan to respond. Sensitive to any suggestion that she’s not politically independent from Nava, she flatly denied that the couple met together with Williams. She also scoffed at her rival’s claim of being intimidated. “Do I look like an intimidating person?” asked the bespectacled Jordan, who matches up well with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in the vertical department.

Not long after, Williams called me to say he’d heard via back channel that Jordan was very upset about his comments. He wanted to “clarify” his remarks, he added, saying that he had described imprecisely his conversations with Jordan and Nava. There wasn’t a three- way meeting, he said. “I was giving you a lot of information and things got confused.” He stood by his assertion that he was intimidated, but in separate conversations with the pair: “I can’t look into Susan’s heart and know if she meant it to be that way, but I felt intimidated.”

There were no injuries.

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