Quentin Lewis Kopp (born 1928 in Syracuse, New York) is a retired California politician and judge. He served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1971-1986, and as a member of the California State Senate from 1986-1998, representing California's 8th Senatorial District, which included the northern portions of San Mateo County and southern portions of San Francisco.
Kopp graduated from Dartmouth College in 1949 and later from the Harvard Law School.
In the 1970s, Kopp served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing the conservative West Portal neighborhood. After his colleague and political ally, Dianne Feinstein, lost the mayor's race in 1975, she agreed not to run for mayor again and support Kopp's bid for mayor in 1979. However, in 1978, mayor George Moscone was assassinated (along with gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk) at City Hall, making Feinstein, then President of the Board of Supervisors, the new mayor.
In 1979, Kopp ran for mayor against Feinstein, but narrowly lost in a runoff. This election also featured Jello Biafra (singer for the punk band The Dead Kennedys) and Sister Boom Boom (Jack Fertig). After this election, Kopp successfully authored a bill to require all future candidates for office in SF to be listed under their given names, so that "there'll be no more Sister Boom Booms."
In 1986, Kopp ran for California State Senate as an independent in a heavily Democratic district straddling south San Francisco and northern San Mateo counties. Republicans' distaste for the Democratic nominee (then Assemblyman Lou Papan) led them to financially support Kopp, who went on to win by just 1 percentage point. He twice won reelection easily.
Participation in BART to SFO extension
During his time in the California State Senate Quentin (together with Mike Nevin) helped push through the BART SFO extension with an airport station[1]
Quentin Kopp, then a state senator from San Francisco. In 1994, [he] qualified a ballot measure in San Francisco. Measure I, which was purely advisory, advocated a station inside the International Terminal.
This resulted in the BART extension being built as a triangle, with the vertices being the San Bruno station at Tanforan Shopping Center (not on the Caltrain Right-of-Way), Millbrae (Caltrain terminal) and SFO International Terminal. To get to all the stations on the extension, the BART train has to reverse at least once. The alternative rejected by Quentin was single station at San Bruno, California where the SFO People mover, BART and Caltrain would share a common station.
The extension of the SFO People Mover across to the station was to be paid for as part of the traffic mitigation for the new International Terminal.
- ^ [1] San Francisco Chronicle Saturday, June 21, 2003 (when extension opened)
Judgeship
After his retirement from the State Senate, Kopp became a judge in San Mateo County in 1999. He retired from the bench in January 2004.
Currently he serves as the Chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority Board. As the Chairman, he is pushing an expensive routing that excludes the East Bay from direct access to California High Speed Rail. Together with Rod Diridon, Sr. and Carl Guardino, Quentin is helping push High-Speed Rail routing that favors San Jose, California interests over the larger interests of the San Francisco Bay Area. Quentin's favored route involves routing California High-Speed Rail south of San Jose, California to Gilroy, California over the Pacheco Pass (involving several tunnels of approximately 6 miles in length through uncertain geography). After an additional 100 miles of no appreciable human settlement, Highway 99 is reached. The alternative Altamont Pass route follows Interstate 580 freeway which goes through several large cities Pleasanton, California, Livermore, California, Tracy, California and Stockton, California and has no significant tunnels.
Family
Kopp is married to the former Mara Sikaters and has three children: his eldest son, Shepard, works for Mark Geragos' law firm. His second son is a musician who goes by the name Stark Raving Brad and lives in San Francisco. His daughter Jennifer is the executive director of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association.
Additional Political Notes and Jobs
He served in political office as an independent, rather than as a member of either major political party. For a time, Kopp held a time slot as a radio talk show host on KGO-AM, a popular talk radio station.
Interstate 380 in San Mateo County was named the "Quentin L. Kopp Freeway". (The road was previously named the Portola Freeway by California's State Legislature, after Gaspar de Portolà.)
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