SAN FRANCISCO Mayor Ed Lee, who became the nation’s first Asian/American mayor of a major U.S. city in 2011, died of a massive heart attack overnight at the age of 65.
ABC7 News reports Lee was grocery shopping last night when he suffered cardiac arrest.
Doctors at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital pronounced him dead at 1:11 a.m.
Lee was a non-politician politician. As a young activist attorney at the city’s Asian Law Caucus, he organized a rent strike at the Ping Yuen Housing Project in Chinatown in 1978. Despite some resistance from residents, the strike went on for six months and the city made improvements in living conditions.
Retired administrative law judge Steve Owyang who also served as Executive and Legal Affairs Secretary with California’s Fair Employment and Housing Commission, fondly remembers working with Lee.
“I am deeply saddened by Ed’s sudden passing, and my thoughts go out to his wife Anita and their daughters,” said Owyang to AsAmNews. “I remember working with him when we were law students in the mid-1970’s at Boalt Hall and at the Asian Law Caucus’s first San Francisco office on Waverly Place in Chinatown. Ed was completely dedicated to improving the lives of Chinatown residents.”
Lee had an affinity for affordable housing issues. He grew up in a government subsidized housing in Seattle. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, his parents struggled to raise six children. His father worked as a cook and his mother was a garment worker.
Lee worked his way up through the city bureaucracy. In 1989, Mayor Art Agnos appointed him as the city’s first investigator under the city’s Whistleblower Ordinance. Two years later, he became the executive director of the Human Rights Commission. By 2000, Mayor Willie Brown would appoint Lee the director of Public Works.
Lee became mayor in 2011 when then Mayor Gavin Newsom was elected Lieutenant Governor. The County Board of Supervisors struggled to rally around a temporary replacement for Newsom. After several votes, they settled on Lee who promised he would not run for election if appointed.
It was a believable promise. Lee had never run for public office before. He had no known ambitions to enter elective life.
He was just supposed to be a placeholder until his term expired in January 2012. But cries of Run Ed Run would be heard, largely coming from the city’s Chinese American community, who took pride in Lee becoming the city’s first Chinese American and Asian American mayor. One of the most outspoken supporters for Lee’s run was Chinatown power broker and consultant for the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce Rose Pak.
Not only did Lee run, but he won with the backing of the city’s moderate faction. In 2015, Lee won reelection without any major opposition.
However his popularity has waned since then due largely to San Francisco’s progressive faction who felt Lee did not do enough to increase the supply of affordable housing and catered too much to the business community, particularly the tech community.
Among his critics were members of Chinatown’s liberal faction. In fact, Pak turned on Lee when he appointed Julie Christensen to serve out the remainder of Supervisor David Chiu’s term in 2015 after Chiu won election to the State Assembly. Pak had lobbied Lee hard to appoint Cindy Chu, the chair of the city’s planning commission and a member of the Chinatown Community Development Center.
Lee has also been criticized by those to the extreme right. Twitter is full of hateful tweets from those who resent his strong support for San Francisco as a sanctuary city. Many of those trolls blamed Lee for the acquittal of the most serious charges against Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the undocumented immigrant who faced trial in the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle in San Francisco.
Lee has also been criticized by those to the extreme right. Twitter is full of hateful tweets from those who resent his strong support for San Francisco as a sanctuary city. Many of those trolls blamed Lee for the acquittal of the most serious charges against Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the undocumented immigrant who faced trial in the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle in San Francisco.
Lee is survived by his wife Anita, his two daughters, Brianna and Tania.
The President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, London Breed, has stepped in as acting mayor under the city’s charter.
_________________________________________________________________________________
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a breaking story. Check back later for more details.
No comments:
Post a Comment