[Sustain] How Newsom, Willie Brown, Rose Pak, Orchestrated Ed Lee Maneuver - Chilling & Outrageous!

[Eric Brooks]

Everyone with any pull on David Chiu needs to read the article below and 
then contact Chiu to tell him we will bring down his political career if 
he continues to take part in this bullshit.

In yesterday's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07bcmayor.html

New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com>


  Behind-the-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of a Mayor

 From left, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Heidi Schumann For The New 
York Times; Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

Beyond City Hall, from left, Mayor Gavin Newsom, former Mayor Willie L. 
Brown Jr. and Rose Pak played crucial roles in the selection of an 
interim mayor.


            By GERRY SHIH


            Published: January 6, 2011

On Sunday afternoon, former Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/willie_l_jr_brown/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 
made an urgent call to Rose Pak, his longtime political ally and the 
powerful head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. Word had trickled 
out that San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors had narrowed the list of 
interim candidates to replace Mayor Gavin Newsom 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/gavin_newsom/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, 
the lieutenant governor-elect.

But the contenders — Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Mayor Art Agnos 
and Aaron Peskin, the chairman of the city’s Democratic Party 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/democratic_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
— were deemed too liberal by Ms. Pak, Mr. Brown and Mr. Newsom, who are 
more moderate.

With momentum fizzling around Ms. Pak’s favored candidate, David Chiu, 
the board president, Ms. Pak and Mr. Brown decided to pool their efforts 
on behalf of another Asian-American official: Edwin M. Lee.

Over the next 48 hours, Ms. Pak, Mr. Brown and the Newsom administration 
engaged in an extraordinary political power play, forging a consensus on 
the Board of Supervisors, outflanking the board’s progressive wing and 
persuading Mr. Lee to agree to become San Francisco’s first 
Asian-American mayor, even though he had told officials for months that 
he had no interest in the job.

“This was something incredibly orchestrated, and we got played,” 
Supervisor John Avalos, a progressive, said in an interview. “I’m still 
trying to figure out what happened. I don’t know what the game was 
about, except that it was to muscle someone into office.”

Barring another last-minute development, the board is expected to ratify 
Mr. Lee’s appointment Friday in its final session. The incoming board, 
to be sworn in on Saturday, is expected to vote to install Mr. Lee next 
week — the last step needed for him to become interim mayor, until the 
election in November.

The behind-the-scenes drama was a stark reminder of the enduring power 
of Ms. Pak and Mr. Brown and their ability to influence city politics at 
the highest levels, even seven years after Mr. Brown left office.

In separate interviews, Ms. Pak and Mr. Brown described Mr. Lee as a 
committed liberal Democrat, and they emphasized the importance of the 
symbolism of an Asian-American mayor.

“This was finally our moment to make the first Chinese mayor of a major 
city,” Ms. Pak said. “How could you let that slip by?”

Mr. Brown said progressives should be “ashamed” of “subtle biases” in 
their opposition to Mr. Lee, a former civil rights lawyer who in 1978 
led city tenants in the first rent strike against the State Housing 
Authority.

“To present an opportunity to a person of color, well-credentialed and 
well-qualified, ought to be one of the tenets of the progressive 
movement,” Mr. Brown said. “That’s genuine progressivism.”

Progressive supervisors said that they did not question Mr. Lee’s 
credentials or his politics. A career bureaucrat, Mr. Lee — who was 
appointed to his current post as city administrator by Mr. Newsom in 
2005 — has a reputation among insiders as one of most competent public 
officials at City Hall. Rather, the progressives bristled at how his 
candidacy was engineered by Mr. Brown and Ms. Pak, whose bare-knuckled 
style of politics they have come to resent bitterly.

“I like Ed Lee, and I’ve always been open to him,” Supervisor David 
Campos said. “If they had given us an opportunity to have the 
conversation with Ed Lee and consider it, maybe we wouldn’t have had 
those issues.”

The last-minute push to install Mr. Lee involved political maneuvering, 
as well as misdirection and some luck, according to people involved in 
the effort.

For months, a number of supervisors had asked Mr. Lee if he was 
interested in being interim mayor, but he had always said no.

The critical stumbling block for Mr. Lee, several people said, was his 
concern about a rule in the city charter that prohibited elected 
officials from taking appointed positions within a year of leaving 
office. Mr. Lee, who is putting two daughters through college, was 
confirmed to a new term as chief administrator in December. He told 
officials he did not want to risk forfeiting the remainder of his 
five-year contract as city administrator, worth $1.25 million.

As his anxieties became clear, Mr. Newsom’s staffers asked the office of 
Dennis Herrera, the city attorney, to begin quietly drafting a charter 
amendment to allow Mr. Lee to return to the administrator’s post after 
he served as mayor, according to several City Hall officials. The 
amendment still needs board approval. On Monday morning, Mr. Chiu, the 
board president, joined Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and others in pushing 
Mr. Lee as a candidate among the board members. But Mr. Lee remained 
deeply ambivalent about the nomination as late as Monday evening.

“I am tremendously reluctant,” Mr. Lee wrote in an e-mail to Ms. Pak as 
he prepared to leave Hong Kong for the hot springs of Yangmingshan 
National Park in Taiwan.

“But Newsom would like to take care of as many concerns that I have, 
including the exemption from work prohibition after serving,” the e-mail 
continued.

Mr. Lee asked Ms. Pak for guidance, writing: “As you know, I love 
serving my city. Would this be the best way?”

Ms. Pak was fortunate to connect with Mr. Lee shortly before he boarded 
his flight to Taiwan — and an area with spotty cellphone service — and 
urged him to consider becoming the first Chinese mayor of San Francisco. 
It was only then, less than 24 hours before the board vote, that the Lee 
camp persuaded its candidate to accept a nomination.

On Tuesday, just hours before the board was to consider nominations and 
vote for an interim mayor, Mr. Newsom and his allies knew they needed a 
single vote more to push through Mr. Lee.

Mr. Newsom turned to Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who had initially favored 
Mr. Lee but had signaled to progressive stalwarts like Chris Daly, Mr. 
Campos and Mr. Avalos that he would back Mr. Hennessey.

The mayor summoned Mr. Dufty and another supervisor, Michela 
Alioto-Pier, a supporter of Mr. Lee, to his office shortly before the 
board meeting.

According to Mr. Dufty, Mr. Newsom urged him to support the “consensus 
candidate.”

When Mr. Dufty went to the board chamber that evening for what turned 
into an eight-hour session, he told Mr. Campos that he “felt good about 
Hennessey,” Mr. Dufty said. That led progressives to nominate their 
favored candidate, Mr. Hennessey, in an effort to lock up his appointment.

But their plan was thrown into chaos when Mr. Dufty refused to vote for 
Mr. Hennessey, leaving the sheriff one vote shy of the six he needed to 
secure the nomination.

Mr. Dufty then called for a recess and met with Supervisor Sophie 
Maxwell and Steve Kawa, Mr. Newsom’s chief of staff, in Mr. Kawa’s 
office, with Mr. Newsom on speakerphone. In an interview, Mr. Dufty said 
he wanted to confirm Mr. Lee’s positions on immigration 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> 
before voting for him. He denied that he brokered a deal with Mr. Newsom.

“I could just see the waters shifting around Mr. Hennessey,” Mr. Dufty 
said.

Shortly before 10 p.m., Mr. Dufty emerged from Mr. Newsom’s suite to 
declare that he was ready to vote for Mr. Lee.

Mr. Daly was enraged. He had spent months working to install someone he 
hoped would be the first truly progressive mayor in 30 years, and that 
dream had been blown apart. He sharply criticized Mr. Dufty and vowed 
revenge on Mr. Chiu, who he had believed would side with the 
progressives, and who could have provided the sixth vote for Mr. Hennessey.

Mr. Chiu, who was mentioned as a possible candidate for interim district 
attorney (to fill the position vacated by Kamala Harris, the new state 
attorney general), announced Thursday that he was taking himself out of 
the running. Mr. Chiu is expected to run for mayor in the fall.

“I will haunt you,” Mr. Daly told Mr. Chiu on Tuesday night. “After this 
vote, I will politically haunt you. It’s on, like Donkey Kong.”

Twice, he muttered “30 years,” then slammed his fist against a banister 
and stormed out of the chamber.

Across town, Ms. Pak gleefully watched the proceedings from a bar at the 
New Asia Restaurant.

She was in a boastful mood the next day, several hours before she 
planned to have celebratory drinks with Mr. Brown at the Chinatown Hilton.

“Now you know,” she told a reporter, “why they say I play politics like 
a blood sport.”

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