Ed Lee for Mayor
Mayor Edwin Lee is the first Asian American mayor in San Francisco's
history. Before being appointed mayor, he was City Administrator. He is
the first Asian American mayor of a top ten U.S. city in terms of GDP
and the first of a top ten U.S. city in terms of population density.
He was born in 1952 in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. His parents are both Chinese immigrants from Guangdong province who came to the United States in the 1930s. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1974 and from the University of California, Berkeley Law School in 1978. He is married and the father of two daughters.
In 1989 he was appointed by Mayor Art Agnos, as the City's first investigator under the city's Whistle Blower ordinance. Agnos later appointed him deputy director of human relations. In 1991, he was hired as executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, serving in that capacity under Mayors Agnos, Frank Jordan, and Willie Brown. Brown appointed him Director of City Purchasing, where, among other things, he ran the City's first Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise program. In 2000, he was appointed Director of Public Works for the City, and in 2005 was appointed by Mayor Newsom to a five-year term as City Administrator, to which he was reappointed in 2010.
With Mayor Gavin Newsom's election as lieutenant governor the mayoral
position became vacant. Under the San Francisco City Charter, vacancies
in the mayoral office may be filled by a majority vote of the Board of
Supervisors, in which each supervisor is barred from voting for himself
or herself. There was speculation about possible appointees and debate
on whether or not the old Board of Supervisors should cast votes for a
new mayor (Four old supervisors were term-limited and four new people
were elected in the 2010 election to take their place) soon followed.
The Board of Supervisors nominated four people: former Mayor Art Agnos, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, and Lee. None captured the necessary six votes at a meeting of the board on January 4, 2011, but after an acrimonious debate some supervisors expressed willingness to switch their support to Lee, and the meeting was recessed until January 7. At the January 7 meeting, the old board voted 10-1 to elect Lee as mayor, with outgoing Supervisor Chris Daly casting the lone "no" vote. The vote was preliminary and non-binding as Newsom had delayed his resignation until new members of the Board take office. A final vote was taken on January 11 by the new board to confirm Lee, one day after Newsom's resignation. The board voted unanimously for Lee and he took office immediately thereafter.
Since his appointment, as interim mayor, he has had a collegial
relationship with the Board of Supervisors unlike the acrimony that
Mayor Newsom and Mayor Brown experienced. He has been very adept at
pleasing both the moderates and progressives and unlike the federal
government struggling to balance the budget Mayor Lee has rather
swiftly signed the City's budget with little rancor or arguments.
Rarely has there been a mayor, let alone an interim mayor, who has achieved what he has in just a few months and has drawn admiration to such a degree that there has been a huge outpouring to persuade him to run for the full term.
No doubt many of the mayoral candidates, and others, will be disappointed if Lee announces his candidacy however there is no candidate who is charming, affable, charismatic and has the ability to work with both moderates and progressives. He also has the credentials, from the positions of City government that he has held, and he will no doubt be victorious.
Article by Henry Karnilowicz
Board Member SFCRG