Quentin L. Kopp D'49, T'50
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"It's by far my most ambitious undertaking"
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Flying Without Leaving the Ground
Tuck alumni have made their mark on the world in many ways, but none quite like Quentin L. Kopp, who has both a highway and fire hydrant named after him.
Both point to his high-profile work over four decades as an iconoclastic San Francisco supervisor, California state senator, and superior court judge. The highway, Interstate 380, speaks to his efforts to upgrade the state's transportation system. The hydrant—playfully decorated to look like him—was dedicated after he wrote a law legalizing painted hydrants, a favor to a city clerk who admired Kopp's fiscal conservatism.
But at 80, Kopp's biggest impact is coming down the track, so to speak. He is chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, charged with building the country's first high-speed railroad. If all goes well, by 2018, trains traveling at 220 miles per hour will whisk passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a brisk two and a half hours. "It's by far my most ambitious undertaking—in fact, it's the biggest rail undertaking in U.S. history since the Transcontinental Railroad, and it's being done without the graft and bribery of a century ago," he says. Open-meeting laws that he drove through the legislature in the 1990s help keep that process in public view.
As chair, his major responsibility is to raise a whopping $33 billion for the first construction phase and $10–12 billion for the second, to be split evenly among California, the federal government, and private investors. Californians will vote in November on a $10 billion bond issue—good timing with the gas crisis—and he's jawboning with the state's congressional delegation and eager private investors. "High-speed rails are profitable in all 10 nations that have them," he says. "I promise—no operating subsidies!"
The undertaking requires the negotiating and fiscal skills he's spent a lifetime developing. By attending Dartmouth, he fulfilled a dream of his pharmacist father, a Russian émigré, who also prodded him to go to Tuck. "To be honest, my heart wasn't in it—the only good grade I got was an A in marketing," he says. At Harvard Law School, he found his voice: "I love the law!"
After a stint in the Air Force, he moved to San Francisco, working as a trial lawyer while diving into Democratic politics. He was elected five times to the city's board of supervisors, served four years as its president, and narrowly lost a bruising mayoral election to incumbent Dianne Feinstein in 1979. Known for his blunt outspokenness, he became an Independent in 1985 and won a hard-fought state senate race in a Democratic district. He was re-elected twice until retired by term limits in 1998.
Promptly appointed a superior court judge by the governor, he served full-time until 2004; now officially retired, he still puts in full workweeks. As much as the rail work challenges him, the court delights him. "There's something new every day, and in terms of human behavior, you can't make it up." He relaxes with his wife, Mara, a psychiatric social worker, and visits his children—Shepard, a lawyer (Dartmouth '86); Brad, a musician; and Jennifer, a vintner. On vacations, he's apt to be riding high-speed trains in places like France or Japan. "It's like flying without leaving the ground!" he says.
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