McNerney, Jerry, 1951-
Gerald Mark McNerney /məkˈnɜːrni/ (born June 18, 1951) is an American businessman, politician, and the U.S. representative for California's 9th congressional district, serving in Congress since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. His district, numbered as the 11th district until 2013, is based in Stockton and includes parts of San Joaquin County, East Contra Costa County, and southern Sacramento County. McNerney holds a Ph.D in mathematics. McNerney is not running for reelection in 2022.
McNerney was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of Rosemary (née Tischhauser) and John E. McNerney. He is of Swiss and Irish descent. He attended St. Joseph's Military Academy in Hays, Kansas, and, for two years, the United States Military Academy at West Point. After leaving West Point in 1971 in protest of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, he enrolled at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees and, in 1981, a Ph.D. in mathematics, with a doctoral dissertation in differential geometry focusing on a generalization of the Laplace–Beltrami operator.
McNerney served several years as a contractor to Sandia National Laboratories at Kirtland Air Force Base on national security programs. In 1985, he accepted a senior engineering position with U.S. Windpower (Kenetech). In 1994, he began working as an energy consultant for PG&E, FloWind, The Electric Power Research Institute, and other utility companies. Before being elected to Congress, McNerney served as the CEO of a start-up company manufacturing wind turbines, HAWT Power (Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine Power).