Mayor Lee, and the Company He Keeps
Now that the SF politician is in office, supporters like Willie Brown and Rose Pak are scrutinized
On election night a couple of weeks ago, former Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. of San Francisco celebrated Mayor Edwin M. Lee’s victory in style at the downtown Palace Hotel, toasting friends as he twirled through the room.
The next morning, Brown went on public radio and lashed out at one of Lee’s unsuccessful challengers, Dennis Herrera, the city attorney.
Brown said that Herrera should forfeit his job. “You decide to run for some other office — you probably should resign your job,” he said. “Period.”
This has been an especially awkward few weeks at City Hall, where Herrera and several other former candidates are gingerly getting back to work after flinging allegations of fraud, corruption and incompetence at one another during a particularly acrimonious mayoral race.
By all accounts, the soft-spoken Lee, who campaigned on the promise of restoring civility to San Francisco politics, seems eager to cease hostilities. The mayor was seen chatting and shaking hands with Herrera on the City Hall steps the day after the election.
He has also had polite, if uncomfortable, conversations with David Chiu, the president of the Board of Supervisors, another candidate who sometimes criticized Lee during the campaign.
But the same could not be said for Lee’s two closest associates: Brown, his political patron, and Rose Pak, the Chinatown power broker.
A week after Brown chastised Herrera, Pak told a Chinese-language newspaper that she was considering running next year to oust Chiu from his district seat. Pak chided Chiu, who won office three years ago with her help, for not heeding her counsel. She offered a Chinese proverb: “Remember the source of the water you drink.”
The episode highlighted the paradox of Lee’s brief political career to date: his close association with two of the city’s most polarizing and powerful characters has been both instrumental to his rise and a frequent source of distraction.
Last summer, even before Lee entered the race, his critics called for an ethics investigation after an independent group steered by Pak raised tens of thousands of dollars in a campaign to entice Lee to run. The group was cleared of wrongdoing. In October, Lee again came under fire when his rivals said that supporters tied to Pak had subverted campaign contribution limits and helped voters in Chinatown fill out their ballots. The district attorney is investigating.
By sounding boastful or vindictive, Brown and Pak “sound like they’re the ones who won, when they spent the entire campaign fending off charges that Ed Lee was a puppet for them,” said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University.
McDaniel said that Lee collected fewer than half of the first-place votes in this first competitive mayoral election in San Francisco under ranked-choice voting, and that if he could not build a coalition, the public might feel that he had not achieved a mandate. “If he’s going to govern like he did before, as the consensus-building, coalition-building mayor, he’s going to have to corral Willie Brown and Rose Pak a bit,” McDaniel said.
Patrick Monk.RN.
Slick Willie, back in the saddle again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLR4iZJLgc4
Who Da Mayor!!
"Michelle Kohlhaas"
1. Thanks for another worthwhile spot of reporting - Gerry Shih leads the best aspects of the Bay Citizen.
2. The news that Rose Pak intends to take down David Chiu is akin to learning that a giant block of fecal matter intends to rid the city of a jar of infected urine. One can only hope that officials from the CDC arrive in bio jumpsuits to remove both from the scene.
3. The ultimate condemnation of San Franciscans as low-information voters is the frightening reality that they twice elected Willie Brown as mayor. It is also proof that this city is ANYTHING BUT liberal. Willie Brown is a straight-up crook, and always has been.
Citizen_S
Kudos to Gerry Shih and The Bay Citizen for covering the heart of the Ed Lee story after the election. Please keep shining a beacon on the mayor, which may help persuade him to follow his better instincts, acting for the good of the many San Franciscans who care passionately about The City instead of largely doing the bidding of thoroughly corrupt power brokers like Willie Brown and Rose Pak and their enablers. The spectacle of federal policymaking held captive to the highest bidder is as frustrating as it is nauseating, but the smaller scale of San Francisco means its government CAN be more responsive to its citizens.
Ed Lee's challenge is to appreciate the desires of organized but narrow interest groups like developers, large corporations, and public employees but to put them in context of the public welfare rather than letting them DEFINE the public welfare.
Will Clark
Here's the overwhelming problem I have with this piece, and please don't take this as a criticism of Gerry Shih, who is doing fantastic investigative work on local politics and has been throughout the election cycle.
Rather, I am seriously put off by the sentiment of the subhead: "Now that the SF politician is in office, supporters like Willie Brown and Rose Pak are scrutinized."
Now that he's in office? NOW!??
Where was everybody else (besides the Citizen) during the campaign when this type of investigative work desperately needed to be done? Why weren't the good people over at the Chronicle looking into the dual webs of connections and influence with Pak and Brown at their respective centers? Perhaps it's the Chronicle's blatant conflict of interest with Brown as its star columnist. Perhaps the draconian staff cuts in recent years has sapped the paper of its institutional knowledge. Then again, perhaps previously strong investigative work by the Chronicle (http://bit.ly/ty6EC6) was simply trivialized by current pieces like this: http://bit.ly/svrVO0.
Thanks to Gerry Shih and the Bay Citizen for doing good work during the election cycle, but woe to all who believe that AFTER the election is a good time to start vetting people and their primary backers.
mooncloud
Thank you for the entertainment. Beats television.