Well, Rose Pak promised a big demonstration and she’s got one: City Hall is mobbed with Ed Lee supporters pushing the supervisors to vote for the city’s first Asian mayor. Lee is still out of town, so he can’t answer questions, although he’s talked to several supervisors by phone. One said he seemed a little overwhelmed by all of this; he wasn’t even sure he wanted the job until Pak and Willie Brown talked him into it.
The revelations that the vote for Lee was a backroom deal orchestrated by Pak and Willie Brown (and from years of Brown watching, I can you this was a classic Brown move) will put Lee supporters like David Chiu and Eric Mar in a tough situation. Aaron Peskin, former supervisor, wasn’t mincing words when I talked to him jost before the meeting started:
“This is no so much about left and right, it’s about democracy and how power is transitioned,” he said. “This is disgusting, not because Ed Lee is or isn’t left or right or a progressive or a liberal. This is about the politics of power, and conservatives and moderates should be just as revolted as anyone.”
Meanwhile, my old friend Rev. Norman Fong, a leading Chinatown progressive, says he supports Ed Lee, as do a lot of progressives in the Asian communtity. I get that, and he’s a decent guy with a good history as a civil rights and housing lawyer, and he might even be a decent mayor. But this process stinks. There’s no other way to put it.