San Andreo
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San Andreo is a fictional city in California from the television series The West Wing. It is the location of the San Andreo Nuclear Generating Station, which became the focus of an October surprise for Senator Arnold Vinick's campaign in the 2006 presidential election.
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[edit] Origin
The city's name is Spanish for St. Andrew, which is also the origin of the name for the unincorporated area San Andreas in the Sierra Nevada mountains as well as the San Andreas Fault that traces down the California coastline. More likely, though, the location is based on the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Onofre, California outside of San Clemente, in the south of Orange County.[1] As these locations suggest, many of the cities and areas throughout California (and other portions of the world explored and conquered by the Spanish Empire) are named for saints in the Spanish language. Accordingly, San Andreo seems to be an attempt at an ambiguously Californian locale.
[edit] Nuclear accident
In the episode "Duck and Cover", the plant approaches meltdown. As the crisis is dealt with by the Bartlet Administration, documents surface in The Washington Post regarding the involvement of Republican Senator and current presidential candidate Arnold Vinick in the opening of the station. He loses his strong lead on his Democratic rival Matt Santos in the political fallout from the near disaster.
After a period of avoiding the questions surrounding the accident and his early support for the plant, Vinick tries to defuse the issue in the episode "Two Weeks Out" by travelling to San Andreo and holding a press conference on the incident and his stance on nuclear power. His strategy seems to have been effective as it exhausted the media of their questions on the issue as well as reaffirmed Vinick's status as the straight-talking candidate.
[edit] See also
- Equatorial Kundu and Qumar - other fictional places from The West Wing
- List of characters on The West Wing
- List of politicians on The West Wing
- List of episodes of The West Wing
