Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

Supporters of the Run Ed Run campaign wait before a rally at San Francisco City Hall on Monday, August 1, 2011

Updated Aug. 7, 2011 at 8:49 p.m.

Interim San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is expected to file paperwork to enter the mayor’s race Monday at City Hall, marking the beginning of an official campaign that will seek to freshen the mayor’s image following two bruising weeks of intense public scrutiny over his political ties.

Lee is set to make an announcement at 9 a.m. Monday in the Department of Elections, according to a media advisory issued Sunday night.

The mayor began making courtesy calls to supervisors Sunday evening to alert them of his decision to run.

"He called to tell me he was running but shared nothing else," Supervisor Eric Mar said. "I wished him good luck."

Lee will enter the race on the heels of a flurry of criticism from some of the city’s leading mayoral candidates, who have jointly criticized the funding sources and legality of the “Run, Ed, Run” campaign and called for ethics investigations. The "Run, Ed, Run" campaign culminated last week in a press event in which the group unveiled what it said were more than 51,000 signatures that it had gathered from local voters encouraging Lee to run.

Lee's official campaign will now likely seek to publicly distance itself from the draft effort and, in particular, Lee’s main political backers, former Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. and Rose Pak, the powerful Chinatown consultant, who are among the most polarizing figures in city politics.

Sources said Pak held a final dinner to discuss Lee’s campaign at R&G Lounge Saturday night with a circle of his major fundraisers in Chinatown, including Kinson Wong, the owner of the Kearny St. restaurant and one of seven donors who gave $5,000 apiece to the “Run Ed Run” campaign. A source with knowledge of the dinner said Lee was not present. 

Lee’s record as a longtime city bureaucrat, working largely out of the public eye, will be less vulnerable to scrutiny than those of veteran politicians in the race. But his opponents have attacked him by highlighting his association with Pak and Brown. Analysts speculated that Pak may make a strategic decision to withdraw from public view for the duration of the campaign.

Calls made to Pak’s cellphone Sunday did not go through; a number she had used for years appeared to have been disconnected.

Meanwhile, Brown, whose Sunday column in the San Francisco Chronicle normally provides a glimpse into the city’s power elite, made no mention of Lee this week.

Pak and Brown may be legally forced to stay on the sidelines of the race following an Ethics Commission ruling last week that barred people involved in “Run Ed Run” from participating in Lee’s official campaign.

Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross reported that under the direction of Ace Smith — the veteran political strategist who helmed the statewide campaigns of Attorney General Kamala Harris and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Brown protégés — Lee would likely decline public financing in an attempt to differentiate himself as a candidate.

In January, when Lee was appointed unanimously as interim mayor by the Board of Supervisors, he promised that he would not run for a full term. He enjoyed a rare degree of popularity in City Hall and in opinion polls in his first few months, passing a budget and crafting a pension reform deal with relative ease and receiving plaudits as a leader who was uninterested in his own political future.

He has come under blistering criticism since suggesting that he would turn back on his promise.

Last Monday, Lee foreshadowed his decision when he hinted to reporters that he was preparing to jump into the race and bracing himself for more criticism.

“Once the decision has been made, you have to figure out how to do it,” he said.