‘LIFE OF SERVICE, CUT SHORT’
Innovative leader: S.F.’s first Asian-American mayor helped make city a thriving tech capital
The shocking death of Mayor Edwin Lee prompted a day of mourning Tuesday among San Francisco’s political class, even as it set off questions about the city’s future amid a fight over the tech industry’s growing influence.
Lee, San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor and the man who helped transform the City by the Bay into a tech capital, died early Tuesday morning. He was 65.
The second-term mayor suffered a heart attack while shopping at Safeway Monday night, according to former Mayor Willie Brown, and was rushed to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. He was declared dead at 1:11 a.m. on Tuesday.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed — Lee’s close political ally and fel-
"Flash never mattered to him, disagreements never deterred him, he was humble and determined no matter the job he held." — San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed, acting mayor
low moderate — immediately became the city’s acting mayor.
“Ed Lee lived a life of service, cut short far too soon,” Breed told hundreds of well-wishers who crowded around the balconies of City Hall’s rotunda.
Allies and opponents of Lee alike remembered him as low-key, self-deprecating and kind — an atypical fit for the take-no-prisoners political climate of 2017. The Seattle native had never held any elected office before becoming mayor, and he was always more comfortable with the mechanics of government than campaigning.
“He truly loved the city, the nuts and bolts of how cities work, even though he never loved the politics,” said Tony Winnicker, a senior adviser in Lee’s office for six years. “He was happiest with the people who cleaned the streets or tended to the parks. … He wasn’t a politician, that wasn’t in his DNA.”
Friends shared memories of the former civil rights lawyer’s corny “dad jokes” and unassuming presence.
“He did not always deliver the best soundbite, carry the room with unspoken charisma,” Breed said. “Flash never mattered to him, disagreements never deterred him, he was humble and determined no matter the job he held.”
As mayor, Lee helped usher in a boom in San Francisco’s tech industry, and gave tax credits to startups like Twitter and Zendesk in a bid to revitalize the somewhatseedy Mid-Market neighborhood. He opened new shelters around the city to help address San Francisco’s visible and intractable homeless problem. He shepherded the city out of the Great Recession, and passed a landmark minimum
wage law.
But even as Lee championed funding for affordable housing, he faced criticism from activists for not doing enough to halt skyrocketing home prices. And many in the city bemoaned the growing influence of technology companies, which Lee did little to blunt.
Breed seems likely to continue his policies. Both rose from humble beginnings in public housing — Breed was raised by her grandmother a half-mile from City Hall — and are members of the city’s moderate, pro-tech political camp. Both are also historic firsts: Breed will be the first African-American woman to be mayor of San Francisco.
The 11-member Board of Supervisors can let Breed continue as acting mayor or vote to appoint her or anyone else as mayor. Any appointment of an interim mayor would require six votes, which could be a difficult equation, especially because no supervisors will be allowed to vote for themselves.
The board is generally viewed as divided between six moderate members, including Breed, and five progressives.
Either way, San Francisco voters will go to the polls on June 5, 2018, to choose a mayor to serve out the remainder of Lee’s term, until January 2020. Breed had been floating herself as a potential candidate for the 2019 race in recent months, and is likely to run, although she gave no hints in her news conference Tuesday.
The June election is expected to be a hotly contested referendum on San Francisco’s path during the years of the tech boom. Former State Senator Mark Leno declared his intention to run for mayor earlier this year, and a host of other officials could join the race.
“After we pause and pay our respects to Ed Lee, the mayoral election will be the first truly wide-open mayoral race in many years,” said Nathan Ballard, a political consultant. “Anybody who’s ever thought of running
for mayor is going to jump in.”
Meanwhile, if there’s a competitive fight among the Board of Supervisors to appoint an interim mayor, “I fear we will devolve into the Hunger Games,” said Dan Newman, a political consultant who worked on Lee’s 2011 and 2015 elections. “Hopefully we have the respect to honor the mayor’s legacy.”
Edwin Mah Lee was born May 5, 1952, in Seattle to immigrant parents, the fourth of six children. He grew up in a public housing project, and helped make deliveries for the family restaurant. His father also died of a heart attack when he was 49 and the younger Lee was 15.
After getting his undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College in Maine, Lee came to the Bay Area to study at UC Berkeley Law School. As a civil rights lawyer and affordable housing activist, he represented low-income tenants and sued San Francisco agencies in several cases.
He then turned to public service, working in city government under four mayors. Ballard met him 20 years ago when he was a bureaucrat in the public works department. “I never in a million years would have thought he would become mayor,” Ballard said. “But then he did a great job.”
Lee was the city administrator when supervisors appointed him mayor in January 2011, filling the remainder of Gavin Newsom’s term when he was elected lieutenant governor. Lee won election in his own right in November 2011 and was reelected in 2015.
He was originally reluctant to take the mayor’s job and run for election, but decided to do so after urging from former mayor Brown, who called him “the best qualified person to ever hold the job.”
Supervisor Hillary Ronen, a political progressive who bashed Lee during her 2016 campaign, said she was struck by his graciousness after she was elected. She remembered watching
the conversations he had with homeless people in a shelter he opened in her district.
“There was a naturalness and a genuine care — nothing put on about it, nothing fake about it,” she said in an interview. “It was heartwarming.”
In Chinatown, where Lee cut his teeth fighting for tenants rights, locals were mourning. “Being able to see yourself in the mayor helped people feel empowered,” said Cindy Wu, deputy director at the nonprofit Chinatown Community Development Center. The fact that Lee spoke Cantonese was a big deal to the many locals who don’t speak English and for the first time could hear their mayor “speak your everyday language when usually you’re so shut out of the civic process,” she said.
Lee is survived by his wife Anita — whom he met in a language exchange program in her native Hong Kong — and their two daughters, Brianna and Tania.
Tributes to Lee poured in from California leaders, many of whom said they couldn’t believe the news.
“I know what this is like and wish I could give Anita a hug and express my sorrow,” said Dianne Feinstein, California’s senator and a former San Francisco mayor, who was elevated to the mayor’s office after the murder of Mayor George Moscone. “Ed was an excellent mayor of a great but sometimes challenging city.”
Speaking to reporters under the City Hall rotunda, a raw-voiced Newsom said he had been in the mayor’s office and “literally every single thing is boxed up.”
“This guy was your mayor 12 hours ago, working his tail off, and now he’s not even alive and everybody’s moving on,” Newsom said. “It’s hard to process.”