Jill Docking

Topeka ? Jill Docking has a front row seat on the biggest economic drop in generations.

“I get the pain of what’s going on in people’s personal lives,” said Docking, a stockbroker and financial adviser with Wells Fargo in Wichita.

And as a member, and recently selected chairwoman, of the Kansas Board of Regents, she also has a front row seat on historic budget cuts to higher education.

But Docking refuses to take a pessimistic view of the situation.

“There’s no sense wringing our hands and looking backwards,” she said in a recent interview. “Many generations have faced more difficult times.”

Positioning higher education

She said that as a regent, “I’m looking at what do we do to get through the next two to three years, and how do we emerge stronger in the next three to five years.”

She said she is confident Kansas’ higher education system will survive the budget problems in better shape than systems in some other states.

“The advantage Kansas has is that we’re all getting along pretty well. The governor (Mark Parkinson) has been terrific — very balanced and smart — and there’s less tension between the Board of Regents and the Legislature than in many other states,” she said.

But for right now, the system is trying to deal with dwindling state revenues. Legislators and Parkinson have cut state funding to higher education by $100 million this year. Without federal stimulus funds, the impact of the budget cuts would have been much worse, officials have said.

Regents are up against it

“The regents are in a tough position now,” said Carol Rupe, a former State Board of Education member from Wichita, who is a friend of Docking’s.

If anyone can smooth the bumps at this time it’s Docking, Rupe said.

“She has a passion for education and kids and Kansas,” said Rupe, who had worked for the Financial Fitness Foundation, a nonprofit founded and led by Docking that promotes financial literacy.

That passion makes Docking want to improve higher education in Kansas, Rupe said.

When asked what she would like to change, Docking doesn’t hesitate.

The regents institutions need to increase the amount they receive in federal research dollars, and they need to do a better job of retaining students, she said.

She said the system has in place excellent chief executives, including Kansas University’s new Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, to accomplish these goals.

An early transplant

Although she was raised in Massachusetts, where her father owned a beer distributorship, Docking’s connection to Kansas started at age 16 when she was a student in a foreign study program in England and met and started dating a Kansan named Tom Docking, who happened to come from one of Kansas’ most prominent political families.

Tom’s father, Robert, was governor for four two-year terms from 1967 to 1975, and his grandfather, George, served as governor from 1957 to 1961. Tom served as lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1987.

Over the next few years, Tom and Jill stayed in touch by mail and visited each other. She said at times it was a little intimidating dating the governor’s son, but added, “The Dockings were nice and warm.”

She started college at Brown University but wanted to go to KU, where Tom was. Her father wanted her to stay at Brown but was talked into letting her go to KU after Robert Docking and former KU Chancellor Archie Dykes took her parents out for dinner to state their case.

She and Tom were married in 1977, and she graduated from KU in 1978, then received her master’s of business administration from KU in 1983, the same year Tom started his term as lieutenant governor.

“We sort of grew up in the political system of the state,” she said. Their two children have also graduated from KU.

The couple remain involved in KU activities, and they donated $500,000 to build the “Docking Family Gateway” and water fountain near 13th Street and Oread Avenue.

A political side

An active Democratic Party advocate and contributor, Jill Docking took a turn in the campaign barrel, but it didn’t turn out well.

In 1996, she ran for the U.S. Senate against Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican. According to reports at the time, the race was close until the final weeks of the campaign when a conservative group bought $400,000 of advertising for Brownback. In addition, the race was marred by reports that supporters of Brownback made telephone calls to voters and mentioned that Docking was Jewish.

She ended up losing with 43 percent of the vote. “It certainly was a tough race, but I came out thinking it was an incredibly positive experience,” she said. She said she was humbled by the many Kansans who came to work for her campaign.

Docking said she doesn’t dwell on the loss. “Since that Senate race, we’ve been normal,” she joked.

But she has been approached several times about seeking political office.

In 1998, she received a call from President Bill Clinton, who asked whether she was interested in another Senate run, and she said no.

Last year, her name surfaced when then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who appointed Docking to the regents, was looking for a replacement for state treasurer after Lynn Jenkins, a Republican, went to Congress. But Docking said the national economic downturn made it difficult for her to leave her longtime clients.

Rupe said Docking would be an excellent candidate to take on Brownback, who is running for governor in 2010. But Rupe said, “I bet she won’t let me talk her into that.”

Docking says her job as a financial adviser and serving as chairwoman of the regents are hard enough without thinking about an election campaign.

She said she prefers to contribute outside the elective process for things she is passionate about, such as higher education. “It’s just a more productive use of my time,” she said.