Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Sunne McPeak Denies Gubernatorial Ambitions (Schwarzenegger's Pick)
Contra Costa Time ^ | Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | Lisa Vorderbrueggen

Posted on 06/11/2009 2:36:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway

My esteemed colleague and fellow political writer Carla Marinucci at the San Francisco Chronicle blogged yesterday that former Contra Costa County Supervisor Sunne Wright McPeak is rumored to be a potential 2010 Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

While McPeak’s credentials for such an undertaking are numerous, the Pleasanton resident told me last night that “if I ever decided to take leave of my mind and do something like that, I’ll come see you for counseling.” (To all the professional counselors out there, no need to worry. I never charge for my services.)

As you may recall, McPeak left her post as chief of the Bay Area Council to serve as state Secretary for Business, Transportation and Housing under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. She left to take a job as CEO and president of the California Emerging Technology Fund, an organization charged with spending $60 million in seed cash to close the digital divide in California. The Fund launches its public education campaign today. (Click here to see my story about the fund.)

McPeak has remained largely quiet about her experience as one of Schwarzenegger’s cabinet members but sources close to her say the highly goal-oriented leader was beyond frustrated with how Sacramento’s hyper-politicized environment impeded progress on multiple levels.

The suggestion that McPeak, who hasn’t held public office in decades, would undertake a campaign for arguably the most politically charged jobs in California sounds nuts.

On the other hand, McPeak has been heavily involved in a group called California Forward. It’s a bipartisan organization calling for the reform of California’s Constitution as a way to solve the state’s massive structural fiscal problems.

In conjunction with legislative reforms, some folks are even talking about forming a third political party that would emphasize results over ideology.

With McPeak’s business background, socially liberal politics and her well-known interest in results over dogma, it’s not hard to see why her name has surfaced as a gubernatorial candidate. The bigger question is whether or not McPeak is interested in reentering politics.


TOPICS: Extended News; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: california; californiaforward; governor; schwarzenegger; sunnemcpeak

1 posted on 06/11/2009 2:36:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway; SierraWasp; Carry_Okie; hedgetrimmer; NormsRevenge; ElkGroveDan

Egads! NO!


2 posted on 06/11/2009 3:52:54 PM PDT by calcowgirl (RECALL Abel Maldonado!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: calcowgirl
I used to live in her district when she first ran for the BOS in Contra Costa. She's probably got a more inflated sense of entitlement than any person I've met.


3 posted on 06/11/2009 3:59:33 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power with a passion for evil.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie

So, you are saying she would be perfect for governor?


4 posted on 06/11/2009 4:05:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
So, you are saying she would be perfect for governor?

Well she'd definitely be perfect for somebody, but not me.

5 posted on 06/11/2009 4:40:49 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power with a passion for evil.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie
McPeak is a study in contradictions.

On the one hand she advocates for increased water surface storage and water-banking. On the other hand, she's promoting preservation of the Sacramento/San Joaquin rivers delta ecosystem as if it were a natural habitat, instead of man-made.

Her own promotions could return the Sacramento and San Joaquin confluences to their natural state. An intermittent, tidal flow marsh in its lower regions and swamp and overflow, 2 months of the year, in its upper regions.

Increased surface storage on the Sacramento, American, San Joaquin and Kings Rivers, plus the new approach to stratifying levies could return thousands of acres of land to productive farm use. Not development; farm use!

6 posted on 06/11/2009 5:40:10 PM PDT by Amerigomag
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Amerigomag
I ain't no cognizanti of "stratifying levies."

Enlighten me, please.

7 posted on 06/11/2009 6:46:01 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power with a passion for evil.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie
Developing a levee of stratified layers of dissimilar fill material is stronger than a traditional levee of available, composite piles, of local fill. A homogeneous fill, rife with pockets of structurally weaker material, leads to saturation failure. lower shear tolerance and susceptibility to hydraulic wash. Grading materials with regard to hardness, angularity, size and composition, even from a local source, allows the levee to be engineered to a higher tolerance. Even peat, if it's grossly cut and then layered in alternating natural orientations, is stronger than 5 yard buckets of the same materials plopped in a pile and shaped with a grader.

It's a matter of will. The Sacramento and San Joaquin River channels can be contained to handle a regulated flow from upstream surface storage, the man made, 20th century swamp can be drained and the drain water from river seepage can be sent south to irrigate Westlands. The salmon can migrate up a regulated, perennial river and the Delta Minnows can populate the channel to be available as a traditional food source for predatory fish.

8 posted on 06/11/2009 7:45:29 PM PDT by Amerigomag
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: calcowgirl

Ehgads.
No!
BumP

a long time bureaucrat in the bay area,, hardly an agent of change.. and certainly no friend of conservatism or anything close to it.

Way to go, Gub. (aus-wipe)


9 posted on 06/11/2009 8:09:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... Godspeed.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Amerigomag
Developing a levee of stratified layers of dissimilar fill material is stronger than a traditional levee of available, composite piles, of local fill.

I have never understood why engineers don't seem to look at structural fills using viscosity models and principles of similitude. The composite material you described is highly thixotropic with a very high yield point. Hence, it would not slump and would withstand moderate shear indefinitely. Where such materials fail is in high shear, but that slope is so flat that the river would never get there. It's an interstitially filled jetty if you will.

Existing highly graded fills are dilatent, they slump at almost no shear no matter how compacted, thus creating the saturated and unstable pockets of which you speak.

Seems simple to me.

10 posted on 06/11/2009 8:26:37 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power with a passion for evil.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: calcowgirl; Carry_Okie; ElkGroveDan; NormsRevenge; Grampa Dave
Sunne McPeak's ambition knows no bounds!!!

I've had a few conversations with her and it's obvious!!!

By the way... She used to think that she played a vital role in the whole Silicon Valley surge into never-never land in the nineties...

11 posted on 06/11/2009 8:58:41 PM PDT by SierraWasp (Galloping suffocating American Socialism stinks like BO!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Amerigomag
"Increased surface storage on the Sacramento, American, San Joaquin and Kings Rivers, plus the new approach to stratifying levies could return thousands of acres of land to productive farm use."

I don't understand... Is this you talkin, or her talkin???

12 posted on 06/11/2009 9:04:29 PM PDT by SierraWasp (Galloping suffocating American Socialism stinks like BO!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Amerigomag; calcowgirl; SierraWasp; Dog Gone
It's a matter of will. The Sacramento and San Joaquin River channels can be contained to handle a regulated flow from upstream surface storage, the man made, 20th century swamp can be drained and the drain water from river seepage can be sent south to irrigate Westlands. The salmon can migrate up a regulated, perennial river and the Delta Minnows can populate the channel to be available as a traditional food source for predatory fish.

Agree technically, disagree politically (which is what water is).

The main problem with this idea is that it's producing irrigation water, not drinking water. So it would have to be treated and they don't want to pay for that. So, although it would work for farmers and riparian wildlife habitat, and farmers could sell bits and pieces to people who wanted to make a network nature gardens to restore native plants for migratory animals and insects, it doesn't keep the ESA gun pointed at everybody's head so that the "right people" on the left can make money. No can do. You just don't see "our" wonderful vision...

You see, it doesn't fund the conversion of the Central Valley into a chain of smog-drenched Sustainable Insta-Cities, surrounded by wonderful "Nature," and connected by jugular boondoggle real-estate subsidy and corporate investment enhancer... er... "mag-lev" so that the globalists can sell food to the cubicle slaves at a fat profit from their monoculture robotized slave camps, er "farms," in South America. I mean, they've 'invested' all this pittance of theirs (and a bunch of your tax money) on paying a horde of white-slave-greenie-consultants-who've-never-done-anything-that-worked-as-promised to tell them that what they're doing is building environmentally "sustainable communities." They've got PowerPoint! They've got campaign money! What more do you want?

Where's your vision, man? ;-)

13 posted on 06/12/2009 4:59:16 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power with a passion for evil.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: calcowgirl

Here’s her platform:

I’m opposed to dumb growth! No more roads and highways! No more homes and gardens! High rise human storage units for everyone!


14 posted on 06/12/2009 6:01:58 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie
"...to tell them that what they're doing is building environmentally "sustainable communities.""

Sounds like the screwball old Franco/Germanic European "Awanee Principles" and Agenda 21 to me!!!

15 posted on 06/12/2009 9:42:02 AM PDT by SierraWasp (Galloping suffocating American Socialism stinks like BO!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson