Lee, Ed, 1952-2017

Edwin Mah Lee (May 5, 1952 – December 12, 2017) was an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 43rd Mayor of San Francisco from 2011 until his death in 2017. Lee was the first Asian American to hold the office.

Born in Seattle, Washington, he graduated from Franklin High School there before earning a B.A. degree from Bowdoin College and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. After Lee completed law school, he worked as managing attorney for the San Francisco Asian Law Caucus, where he was an advocate for affordable housing and the rights of immigrants and renters. In 1989, Mayor Art Agnos appointed Lee to be the city's first investigator under the city's whistleblower ordinance. Agnos later appointed him deputy director of Human Relations. In 1991, he was hired as executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, serving in that capacity under Mayors Agnos, Frank Jordan, and Willie Brown. Brown appointed him director of city purchasing, where, among other responsibilities, he ran the city's first Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise program. In 2000, he was appointed director of public works for the city, and in 2005 was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom to a five-year term as city administrator, to which he was reappointed in 2010. As city administrator, Lee oversaw the reduction of city government and implemented the city's first ever ten-year capital plan.

After Newsom was elected Lieutenant Governor of California, Lee was appointed to succeed him. Though initially promising not to run for election in November 2011, he reneged on his promise and won election to a full term; Lee would go on to be re-elected in 2015. As Mayor, Lee implemented a revitalization of Mid-Market, San Francisco, providing companies that moved into the area with a temporary exemption from paying San Francisco's 1.5 percent payroll tax. In 2012, Lee proposed the creation of a Housing Trust Fund, which would generate between $20 million and $50 million of funding for affordable and middle class housing per year for thirty years. Lee sponsored a $310 million bond measure to pay for housing for the November 2015 general election, which passed. In 2017, Lee approved a $44 million project to build affordable housing for teachers. In 2015, Lee co-chaired the minimum wage campaign with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, and worked with the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West for a November ballot initiative to gradually increase California's minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Lee died at San Francisco General Hospital after suffering cardiac arrest. He was buried in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.