{"id":93011,"date":"2025-12-13T06:55:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T06:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/93011\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T06:55:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T06:55:36","slug":"late-san-francisco-mayor-ed-lee-honored-at-city-hall-with-new-bust-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/93011\/","title":{"rendered":"Late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee honored at City Hall with new bust"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco is known as a city filled with gratifying irony.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the bust of James Phelan, a former mayor who promoted his anti-Chinese views, was replaced with that of the city’s first Asian American Mayor, Ed Lee.<\/p>\n

“It’s so poignant, so important not just for the Asian community but for all people in San Francisco to know hat hate and discrimination like that doesn’t have a place in the city,” said Lee’s daughter, Tania Lee.<\/p>\n

Lee was a child of Chinese immigrants who grew up in public housing. He later became a housing rights attorney.<\/p>\n

When then mayor Gavin Newsom resigned to become Lieutenant Governor, the Board of Supervisors agreed they could work with Lee and elected him.<\/p>\n

City Administrator Carmen Chu was a board supervisor back then.<\/p>\n

VIDEO: A look back at San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s legacy<\/a><\/p>\n

Ed Lee will be remembered for being San Francisco’s first Chinese American mayor, but he also stepped up to lead a city emerging from a national economic crisis.<\/p>\n

“We really wanted someone who knew how the city’s operations worked and try to take the politics out of things and really try to delivery for the city,” remembered Chu.<\/p>\n

Shortly after, Lee was elected by voters in 2011 promising to only serve for one term.<\/p>\n

He broke that promise, much to the dismay of some city officials and went on to win reelection in 2015.<\/p>\n

During his tenure, Lee focused on the city’s growing homelessness issue and in 2016 created the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.<\/p>\n

He later came up with the Affordable Housing Fund realizing the need for more homes for seniors, teachers and other San Franciscans who were being priced out.<\/p>\n

He also made it his mission to revitalize the long-neglected mid-Market area by bringing in Twitter and other tech companies, offering them big tax breaks, a controversial move still criticized today.<\/p>\n

MORE: San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s Chinatown roots<\/a><\/p>\n

For some years, it appeared the area was on its way to recovery, only to fall once again in disarray after Twitter moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n

Lee was known for appealing to the heart of the city. For one whole day, he turned San Francisco into Gotham City to please a five-year-old with leukemia obsessed with the Batman character.<\/p>\n

He loved sports and was instrumental in bringing the Golden State Warriors to San Francisco and facilitating the construction of Chase Center.<\/p>\n

“He was a Giants fan, he was a Warriors fan, a big fan of all the sports. He loved sports. Every time he talked about sport his face lit up,” recalled his widow, Anita Lee.<\/p>\n

In December 2017, Lee suffered a heart attack at his local supermarket and later died at SF General Hospital. He was 65.<\/p>\n

Anita Lee told ABC7 news she wants San Franciscans to remember her late husband as the “People’s Mayor.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco is known as a city filled with gratifying irony. On Friday, the bust of James Phelan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[51189,51188,7000,51190,101,103,6499,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-93011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-anita-lee","tag-ed-lee","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-james-phelan","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-mayor","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}