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Edwin Lee 李孟賢
43rd Mayor of San Francisco
Incumbent
Assumed office January 11, 2011
Preceded by	Gavin Newsom
City Administrator of San Francisco
In office June 22, 2005 – January 11, 2011
Mayor	Gavin Newsom
Succeeded by	Naomi M. Kelly
Personal details
Born	May 5, 1952 (age 61) Seattle, Washington
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Anita Lee (m. 1980)
Children	Brianna Lee Tania Lee
Residence	San Francisco, California
Alma mater	Bowdoin College University of California, Berkeley
Profession	Attorney
Website	www.sfmayor.org

Ed Lee (politician)
Traditional Chinese	李孟賢
Simplified Chinese	李孟贤
[show]Transcriptions

Edwin Mah Lee (born May 5, 1952) is the 43rd Mayor of San Francisco, California. He was appointed by the Board of Supervisors on January 11, 2011 to serve out the remainder of former mayor Gavin Newsom's term, after Newsom resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California. At the time of his appointment, Lee pledged not to run for the office, but he later decided to join the race. Lee won theelection on November 8, 2011 to serve a full term as Mayor.

Lee is the first Chinese American mayor in San Francisco's history, as well as the first Asian Americanelected to the office. Before being appointed mayor, he was City Administrator.

Personal life
Lee was born in 1952 in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. His parents immigrated to the United States from Toishan, Guangdong Province, China in the 1930s. Lee's father, Gok Suey Lee, fought inWorld War II, and worked as a cook managing a restaurant in Seattle.He died when Lee was 15. His mother was a seamstress and waitress.Lee has five siblings. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Bowdoin College inMaine in 1974 and from the University of California, Berkeley Law School in 1978. He married his wife Anita in 1980 and has two daughters, Tania and Brianna.

San Francisco government
After completing law school, Lee 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, Lee was appointed by Mayor Art Agnos as 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 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.

Appointment as mayor
Under the San Francisco City Charter, vacancies in the mayoral office may be filled by a majority vote of theBoard of Supervisors, in which each supervisor is barred from voting for himself or herself.Speculation about possible appointees and debate on whether or not the old Board of Supervisors should cast the vote for the new mayor soon followed after Newsom's election as lieutenant governor. (Four old supervisors were term-limited and four new people were elected in the 2010 election to take their place).

The Board of Supervisors nominated four people: former Mayor Art Agnos, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, and Lee. None of them captured the necessary six votes at a meeting of the board on January 4, 2011, but after an acrimonious debate, some supervisors expressed willingness to switch their support to Lee,and the meeting was recessed until January 7. At the January 7 meeting, the old board voted 10–1 to elect Lee as mayor, with outgoing Supervisor Chris Daly casting the lone "no" vote.At the time, Lee pledged not to seek election if appointed, a statement which helped to gain support for his appointment. The board included people who aimed to run in the November 2011 mayoral elections; none of them wi.