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Ed Lee, San Francisco Mayor, Dies at 65
Edwin M. Lee, an affordable housing advocate and technocrat who became the
first Asian-American to be elected as mayor of San Francisco, died early on
Tuesday of undisclosed causes, his office said. He was 65.
“It is with profound sadness and terrible grief that we confirm that Mayor
Edwin M. Lee passed away on Tuesday, December 12 at 1:11 a.m. at Zuckerberg
San Francisco General Hospital. Family, friends and colleagues were at his
side,” his office said in a statement.
Brent Andrew, the spokesman for the Zuckerberg San Francisco General
Hospital and Trauma Center, said Mr. Lee arrived at the hospital in an
ambulance at about 10 p.m. on Monday.
Mr. Andrew was unable to say what condition Mr. Lee was in when he arrived.
But he said that the ambulance had picked up the mayor, along with his wife,
who was not a patient, from a residential area of shops and restaurants. Mr
. Lee collapsed while shopping at a supermarket, according to local news
accounts.
Under the city’s rules, London Breed, the president of the board of
supervisors, became the acting mayor.
As mayor, Mr. Lee, who was elected in 2011, presided over a tremendous shift
in wealth in the city driven by the technology boom that put San Francisco
at the center of global innovation.
Rents soared past levels only the wealthiest could afford, an ironic
development for Mr. Lee, who began his career fighting for affordable
housing. When Mr. Lee took office in January 2011, the median home value in
San Francisco was $656,500. Today it is about $1.25 million, according to
Zillow, the real estate data company. A sharp rise in rents — the city’s
median rent is about $4,300 — also pushed large segments of the middle
class out of the city. Office rents in parts of San Francisco rose higher
than in Manhattan.
Mr. Lee was born in 1952 in the Seattle neighborhood Beacon Hill, one of six
children of Chinese immigrants who came to the United States in the 1930s.
His mother was a seamstress; his father, a war veteran, died when Mr. Lee
was a teenager.
In an interview with The New York Times last year, Mr. Lee said he had been
drawn to San Francisco for its diversity and tolerance.
“California, particularly, San Francisco, has always been an opening,
welcoming atmosphere. That’s kind of what drew me here,” he said. “Being
born and raised in Seattle, I wanted to get away from the rain and of course
sunny California was attractive. But the main attraction was a kind of
feeling that freedom of expression and maybe a person of a different ethnic
background could be welcomed and succeed.”
Mr. Lee said he felt responsible as mayor for maintaining San Francisco as
an “international beacon.”
“People come here to innovate, they want to have the ideas, they want to
challenge themselves with different languages and different cultures and be
successful at the same time,” he said.
The mayor was a symbol of the city’s changing demographics from a white
majority to what the mayor called a “majority of minority groups.” Whites
made up 42 percent of the population in the 2010 census, while Asians
constituted a third of the population, Latinos around 15 percent and African
Americans 6 percent. Electing its first Chinese-American mayor was a major
milestone for a city that has a long history of discrimination against
Chinese people.
Mr. Lee became mayor in January 2011 when, after weeks of disputes, the
Board of Supervisors elected him by a 10-to-1 vote as the interim leader of
a city in which roughly a third of the residents are of Asian descent.
After consistently expressing a reluctance to hold the job of mayor on a
permanent basis, Mr. Lee entered the electoral race in August 2011 and was
elected in November, becoming mayor at a time of tremendous change for the
city as the technology industry became increasingly influential.
Mr. Lee received a full scholarship and matriculated at Bowdoin College.
After graduating, he moved to the Bay Area in 1975 to study law, and quickly
became involved in the housing issues that would define his early career.
His understanding of Cantonese and Taishanese helped him to win the trust of
immigrant communities on whose behalf he fought as part of the San
Francisco Asian Law Caucus.
After a decade, he left that organization and proceeded to work in five
different city departments under four different mayors. In 1991, he became
the city’s human rights commissioner, and in 2005, was appointed city
administrator.
At his first swearing-in, in 2011, he commented on his rise from housing
advocate to virtually unknown civil servant to city leader.
“Decades ago, I was about as anti-establishment as one could be,” he said.
“But today, like you, I’m trying to make the establishment work for all
San Franciscans.”
He is survived by his wife, Anita, and his two daughters, Tania and Brianna.
Mr. Lee easily won re-election in 2015, but two years later was struggling
under the housing issues that are again weighing on the city. Residents
projected their frustrations about the city’s unaffordability onto the
mayor. A column in The San Francisco Chronicle in May, headlined “Where’s
Ed Lee, our fading mayor?” questioned his ability to contend with the
challenges facing the tech hub.
“Lee lacks the dynamic and visionary leadership that it takes to manage the
explosive growth that’s been rocking San Francisco in recent years,” the
columnist, David Talbot, wrote. “As a result, the city seems less
affordable and more difficult to live in than ever.”
But Mr. Lee could still be forceful on issues that mattered to him, and he
retained his passion for immigrant rights. In January, in his State of the
City address, he insisted that San Francisco would remain a sanctuary city
“now, tomorrow, forever.”
Christine Hauser contributed reporting.
RELATED COVERAGE
A Mayor in the Middle of Two San Franciscos Feb. 24, 2014
Battles in San Francisco, but Not in Mayoral Race Nov. 1, 2015
Short, Gray and Trimmed, a New Star in the Campaign Nov. 5, 2011
In Mayoral Election, Chinese-Americans’ Growing Power Is on Display Nov. 5,
2011
As Mayor Cultivates New Business, Treatment of Backer Is Questioned March 31
, 2012
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