Riling Rafferty

In one of last week's most surprising election upsets, California's flamboyant, fundamentalist educator Max Rafferty was denied a third term as state superintendent of public instruction. The winner is Rafferty's polar opposite: Wilson Riles, 53, a tall (6 ft. 4 in.), soft-spoken authority on teaching poor children, who talked sense about teacher training and preschool education (TIME, Nov. 2). Riles became the first black ever elected to statewide office in California.

Early in the campaign, Rafferty topped the polls and entranced his admirers by blasting unruly students, the decline of "moral" instruction and busing for school desegregation. Yet Rafferty had fallen out of favor with many Republicans two years ago, when his blustery senatorial campaign lost the seat to a Democrat. Last March fiscal conservatives were dismayed by a non-partisan study that cited waste and inefficiency in Rafferty's department.

Rafferty's biggest mistake turned out to be underestimating the intelligence of the voters. Riles took them seriously. In two debates, for example, he nimbly deflected Rafferty's attacks on sex education by pointing out that California law does not require it for any child whose parents object. Riles played up flaws in Rafferty's record but more often stressed his own expertise.

Born in Alexandria, La., Riles was orphaned at the age of nine, raised by family friends. Later he moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., where he attended nearby Northern Arizona University. His first teaching job was in a one-room school on an Apache reservation in Pistol Creek. After Army Air Corps service, he returned to teaching, then took off four years to run West Coast operations of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. He joined the California Department of Education in 1958.

During the campaign he drew on his experience to propose a statewide form of Head Start for rich as well as poor children. He hopes to find new ways to hold schools accountable for their academic performance and tell taxpayers "what they are getting for their money."

Presented with a plausible alternative to Rafferty's sloganeering, voters of all races and regions helped give Riles a solid 54.1% majority.

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