Jim Shella: Gov. O’Bannon was a good politician, man

I’m writing this column on the 20th anniversary of the death in office of Gov. Frank O’Bannon. I think it’s important to remember the governor and the impact of his life and death.

Gov. O’Bannon was a good politician and a better man

His greatest accomplishment was the creation of a community college system, but he should also be remembered for deft handling of the budget crisis created by 9/11.

I’m writing this column on the 20th anniversary of the death in office of Gov. Frank O’Bannon. I think it’s important to remember the governor and the impact of his life and death.

O’Bannon died eight days after suffering a stroke in a Chicago hotel room while attending the 2003 Midwest U.S. Japan Association conference on foreign trade.

He died on a Saturday, and while I always hated working on weekends, no journalist wants to be left out when there is big news to report. I was shopping at a grocery store when I got a message indicating that death was imminent. I raced home to change clothes and headed directly to the Statehouse. The news of O’Bannon’s death broke while I was on the way there. I was still pulling on my sport coat when my first live report on WISH-TV Channel 8 began around midday.

The next 12 hours or so were a blur as we covered everything from the swearing in of a new governor to the motorcade that carried the previous governor’s body from the airport to an Indianapolis funeral home.

I was one of a small group of people who witnessed Joe Kernan taking the oath of office in the state Supreme Court chamber. Afterward, I was allowed to view the handwritten choreography for the impromptu ceremony drawn out on a piece of scrap paper by Justice Ted Boehm. I was also permitted to share that drawing with the TV audience. History in the making.

I share these personal details because this was personal to me. I knew Frank O’Bannon well, having covered his service in the state Senate, as lieutenant governor and as governor. (And, full disclosure, last year I married Pat Rios, who served as his deputy chief of staff.)

During Frank O’Bannon’s seven years as governor, I conducted a weekly interview with him usually, accompanied by news photographer Jim Hester. Jim and I earned several nicknames in the Statehouse, but Gov. O’Bannon had his own. He called us Good Jim and Bad Jim. I was Bad Jim. I guess he didn’t like some of my questions.

Yet Frank O’Bannon is best remembered for his easygoing demeanor. State troopers talked about how he would ride in the front seat so he could talk to them rather than in the back seat like other governors. He was a gentleman known for considering the opinions of opponents as well as those of supporters. His greatest accomplishment was the creation of a community college system, but he should also be remembered for deft handling of the budget crisis created by 9/11.

He was a good politician. A Democrat, O’Bannon beat Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith in 1996 in a race Republicans thought they couldn’t lose. In 2000, he suspended the sales tax on gasoline in the middle of his race for re-election in a move that crushed the campaign of Republican David McIntosh.

His 1997 inauguration, held outside so that hundreds of fourth-graders could attend, was a bust due to subzero temperatures. So in 2001, he moved the inauguration to the Hoosier Dome, invited fourth-graders again, and had the biggest crowd in history.

Some of my best memories of Gov. O’Bannon, however, are of some smaller gatherings. The annual picnics he threw for the Statehouse press corps starting when he was lieutenant governor. He gave out white elephant gifts that were actually things he was given during official visits—things like hard hats, sports jerseys and commemorative plates.

And he served beer.•

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Shella hosted WFYI’s “Indiana Week in Review” for 25 years and covered Indiana politics for WISH-TV for more than three decades. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.

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