Tests conducted Friday at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center showed that Doree O'Connell, wife of state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell remains cancer-free following an intensive course of chemotherapy.

Mrs. O'Connell, 50, reared in Ventura and the daughter of a beloved local educator, the late Orlando Caputo, had a cancerous tumor removed from her brain in April. As a result of the positive test results, she will now be able to cut back substantially on her chemotherapy treatments.

Given the circumstances of his wife's health, Jack O'Connell was personally relieved at the results of the June election, in which he was re-elected by receiving a majority of votes for the nonpartisan office. Had he received less than 50 percent, he would have had to campaign for a runoff election in November. As it is, he is freed of the demands of campaigning — likely until 2010, when his second term will end.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stumbled through his Lost Year in 2005, analysts questioned the wisdom of his strategy to take on all of Sacramento's organized-labor special interests at once. It would have been one thing, they noted, to take on the prison guards alone, or the California Teachers Association alone. But to anger prison guards, teachers, firefighters, the AFL-CIO, police officers and nurses all at one time — that was a prescription for disaster.

Since his November defeat, Schwarzenegger has pulled off quite a turnaround. In the wake of last week's stinging rebuke of the administration's apparent retreat on prison reform, it's now clear that Schwarzenegger has gone from taking on all the unions at once to attempting to appease all the unions at once.

To review:
-- The administration abandoned a rule-making attempt that would have redefined lunch-break rules for workers. The proposed change had been bitterly opposed by the AFL-CIO.
-- The administration abandoned an attempt to adopt emergency rules that would have allowed hospitals to suspend portions of the state's landmark law guaranteeing minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. The proposed rule was the No. 1 beef of the California Nurses Association, the group that protested at scores of Schwarzenegger's special-election fundraisers.
-- Schwarzenegger, who a year ago disputed the education community's assertion that he had broken a $3 billion funding promise, in May not only acknowledged that there was a broken promise but also proposed a multiyear plan to repay schools the disputed money. That issue is what drove the California Teachers Association's anger.
-- The administration, after saying last year it intended to revisit the issue of pension reform after having been forced to drop its proposed special-election initiative on the issue, has been utterly silent about pensions this year. That's the issue that ignited the opposition from police and firefighters' unions.
-- Last week a special master appointed by a federal judge publicly accused the administration of retreating on its efforts to reform a prison system that Schwarzenegger himself had said early last year has “too much political influence, too much union control and too little management courage and accountability.� Two agency secretaries who had promised to reign in union influence have resigned this year. And just today, Schwarzenegger unveiled a plan to try to build additional prisons because existing prisons are so crowded they are "unsafe for staff and inmates alike." These are the kinds of issues that motivated the prison guards' union to join the anti-Schwarzenegger union coalition last year.

One by one, the groups that Schwarzenegger assailed last year as "special interests" are having their interests addressed by the governor.

Not long after former Ventura County Assemblyman Tony Strickland announced his intent to run for controller, a mocking website appeared that featured Strickland's face on a cereal box (a la Kellogg's Tony the Tiger) and argued that Strickland was a liberal in conservative's clothing. The site was called TonytheStrickland.com.

The same pranksters have now turned their attention to his wife, current Assemblywoman Audra Strickland. The new website is called retireaudra.com.

It features newspaper reports, including some I've authored, that detail complaints that have been lodged against the Stricklands for their practice of using campaign funds to pay one another for consulting services and to make contributions to the other's political causes. The photo of Mrs. Strickland is not flattering.

The good news for the Strickland family: As of this moment, an attempt to call up TonytheStrickland.com produces this message: "Notice: This domain name expired on 06/09/06 and is pending renewal or deletion."

The five-way Democratic primary in the 41st Assembly District turned out to be more one-sided than many observers expected, with Julia Brownley winning the nomination by 8 percentage points, or almost 3,000 votes.

How did she do it? In a district with several distinct communities, she dominated in her own territory and then held her own or better everyplace else. It was an impressive performance, given that four of the candidates were from Santa Monica and only one — Calabasas City Councilman Barry Groveman was from the inland portion of the district.

Brownley won the San Fernando Valley segments of the district that are in the city of Los Angeles by just 100 votes over Jonathan Levey, whose campaign zeroed in on those communities. She overwhelming carried her hometown, beating Groveman by 1,000 votes in Santa Monica. She outperformed Kelly Hayes-Raitt by 500 votes in Ventura County, an area targeted by Hayes-Raitt. And she lost by only 300 votes in the four-city cluster that was Groveman's home turf — Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and Hidden Hills.

The impressive win was one of several for Brownley's consultant, Parke Skelton, who also helped engineer the surprising victory of Senate candidate Jenny Oropeza.

With some fanfare, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today personally released an Energy Commission study he ordered in April to look into high gasoline prices. Two months later, he announced that the commission had discovered an "unusual spike" that saw prices in California jump in late April even while prices elsewhere in the nation were relatively stable.

Schwarzenegger also talked tough: "We'll get to the bottom of this."

The only question is how it took two months for the Energy Commission to determine this information. A daily visit to the American Automobile Association's fuelgaugereport.com could have revealed the same information in real time.

The expectation in Sacramento this June is that the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will produce a rare on-time budget. There are many conventional explanations for this possibility: a multibillion-dollar revenue windfall that has made it possible to fully fund education and most other programs without having to make cuts; a new spirit of bipartisanship, begun with the passage of infrastructure bonds, that benefits in an election year the battered image of both Schwarzenegger and lawmakers; the fact that the state borrowed so much money to get itself out of a budget hole in previous years that paying back debt absorbs surplus revenue that might otherwise be the subject of fights over new spending or tax cuts.

But there's another explanation that many in the Capitol point to with hope, as they anticipate the possibility of a July vacation undelayed by a prolonged budget fight: the World Cup.

There are a lot of soccer fans in the Legislature, and among them is Speaker Fabian Nunez. He very much wants to go to Germany to attend the World Cup, which ends in early July. He can't leave until a budget has been passed.

It looks like Californians received only a three-day reprieve from the assault of negative political ads on TV.

A source who has seen the ads tells me today that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will go on the air tomorrow with six days and $30 million worth of ads attacking Democrat Phil Angelides. The ad opens with a seagull walking backwards on a beach, and asserts that by electing Angelides Californians would be taking the state backwards -- back to the bad old days before the recall.

The only question now: How long will it take the Angelides' campaign, depleted by its primary battle against Steve Westly to respond?

Walking the grounds of a San Jose Greek festival with Phil Angelides on Saturday, it was easy to feel the love. Strangers came up to have their photos taken with the Greek-American running for governor. Scores of people eagerly grabbed up campaign buttons and bumper stickers. At one point, Angelides, in high spirits, walked over, nudged me and smiled: "I think I've got this group."

No question about it. But even in the midst of this Greek love fest I witnessed a remarkable moment that spoke to the incredible power of an outrageous allegation. A young Greek woman who had just gone up to Angelides to shake his hand returned to her boyfriend — from his looks, probably nonGreek — to relate her excitement. The boyfriend was unimpressed. "He still hasn't answered the Tahoe issue," he grumbled.

It's clear that Steve Westly's ad that implies Angelides was sued for dumping sludge into Lake Tahoe has stopped a lot of Democrats in their tracks. The act of dumping sludge into one of the state's most magnificent natural wonders is so shocking, so unsettling that people can't get that ad out of their minds.

It doesn't matter that the ad is as close to a lie as one can get. It says, "In the late 1980's real estate developer Phil Angelides' real estate company invested in a condo project in Lake Tahoe. The developers soon ran afoul of the law." If you listen very carefully, it doesn't say that Angelides or his real estate company ran afoul of the law. That's because Angelides was an investor who purchased partial ownership of one unit of the 22-condo project. He had no more of a relationship with the development company that "ran afoul of the law" than any homeowner has with the developer of his house. The ad is so outrageous that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, not usually someone given to hyperbole, called it "dastardly."

Clearly, the ad has had enormous impact. A Democratic legislative candidate who was walking precincts last weekend told me that several people brought it up on their own -- and the legislative candidate, obviously, wasn't at their door to talk about the governor's race.

Here's another indication that it's working: Last Friday afternoon aboard his campaign bus I asked Westly what his advertising plans were the final four days of the campaign. From here on out, Westly said, he was going back to positive ads. But while working out at the health club this morning, watching "The Today Show" from the treadmill, there it was: The Lake Tahoe ad was still running.

It sure looks as if both camps are aware that this ad -- as outrageous as it is -- will have a major impact on the outcome tomorrow.