Ed Lee, San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, dies at 65

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who led the city during a development boom fueled by unprecedented tech wealth, died early Tuesday. He was 65.

Lee's death was announced by the city in a statement. No cause of death was immediately given.

'It is with profound sadness and terrible grief that we confirm that Mayor Edwin M. Lee passed away on Tuesday, Dec. 12 at 1:11 a.m. at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital,” the statement said. 'Family, friends and colleagues were at his side. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Anita, his two daughters, Brianna and Tania, and his family.”

Lee was elected mayor in 2011, becoming the first Asian-American to hold the job.

Lee stepped up to lead San Francisco just as the tech boom began to take hold in the city. Unemployment plummeted and the city saw a wave of development, symbolized by a new tallest building, the Salesforce tower.

Under Lee, San Francisco saw a crop of new high-rise buildings, and the city gained enhanced status as the global capital of the tech industry.

But Lee also became a magnet for criticism as rents and property values soared and many residents of moderate means said they could no longer afford to live in the city.

In a city famous for its sophistication and activism, Lee cut a decidedly down-home figure, known for his folksy jokes and political consensus building.

Lee easily won reelection in 2015. That year, voters approved a $310-million affordable housing bond he championed - the largest in San Francisco history.

Lee and his six siblings grew up in a Seattle public housing complex before his father, a cook, and his mother, a garment worker, built a modest home. As a youth helping with deliveries from the family restaurant, he had listened to hostile customers berate his dad with racial slurs.

'It was an awakening,” Lee told The Times in 2015. '‘Why do we as people take this?'”

As a young lawyer, he joined the San Francisco Asian Law Caucus, helping in 1978 to organize a rent strike by residents in Chinatown's decrepit Ping Yuen public housing project after a young woman was raped and killed there.

In 1988, then-Mayor Art Agnos hired Lee to run a whistle-blower program, followed by a stint heading the Human Rights Commission, where he pressed for fair hiring practices for women and minorities. In his next post, as city purchaser, he opened contracting doors to those same groups. Later he became public works director and city administrator.

In a 2011 interview, Agnos described Lee as 'charming, self-deprecating and competitive.”

Lee's election was a milestone for San Francisco's influential Chinese American population. Many came from China to San Francisco during the gold rush era but faced decades of ugly discrimination by both residents and the city government. At the turn of the 20th century, the city shuttered all Chinese-owned businesses and quarantined and barricaded Chinatown.

Under San Francisco law, Lee will be succeeded by the chairman of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

While the circumstances of Lee's death have not yet been announced, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown told KGO-TV that Lee suffered cardiac arrest.