But during that time, Yee has produced a series of possible ethical breaches so numerous and bizarre that voters might feel compelled to seek out extraordinary accomplishments to balance out his weird record.
At every step of the way, Yee has offered explanations, saying there's no fire amid all this smoke. And in response to a detailed list of questions from SF Weekly, his campaign manager said Yee's personal history is old news that has already been addressed.
There may be populist appeal in Yee's repeating the videogame equivalent of The Simpsons' Helen Lovejoy's catchphrase, "Won't somebody please think of the children?" But his record of actual achievement is tainted with pay-to-play politics and pandering — just more points on his already compromised ethical compass.
Key to being a good politician is being a good explainer. Think of Barack Obama parsing healthcare reform. Or Winston Churchill calling for national unity.
Leland Yee is also adept at explaining, but not in a good way. He has given explanations for his shoplifting arrest, for getting caught up in prostitution dragnets, for being called out for falsifying his address, and for allegedly altering medical forms.
Then there are odd things that he doesn't seem to have explanations for. One has to do with the source of $1 million in mortgage debt Yee assumed more than a decade ago. His then-annual family income of $42,500 couldn't hope to cover the $60,000 in mortgage payments each year. The juxtaposition of Yee's massive debt and meager income interested then-SF Weekly reporter Peter Byrne. Through his campaign manager, Jim Stearns, Yee showed Byrne incomplete financial records meant to demonstrate that he and his wife, Maxine, could afford the debt because they had scrimped and saved.
Byrne was left to ask: "If the Yees have enough savings to keep paying off debts that their current income clearly cannot cover, where and when did the money originate?"
This question is more pertinent than ever in the wake of a mortgage meltdown fueled by liar loans.
When lenders and borrowers follow the rules, you don't see customers burdening themselves with debt payments equal to 140 percent of their income. Making the matter more confusing, in 2004 the press reported that florist and real estate entrepreneur Judy Yeung had identified Leland Yee as a member of the "honorary advisory council" of the nonprofit America Education Foundation International. Yee disavowed any connection. Last year, Yeung was convicted of fraud charges in connection with a scheme that involved using the nonprofit as a front for issuing "liar loans," where a broker and client fraudulently overstate the ability to repay. One of the brokers in that case worked for the same lender behind Yee's mortgage.
Another issue concerns a dispute the Yees had in 2002 with their next-door neighbors, who wanted to build an addition to their house. A private investigator, hired by convicted extortionist and former Yee political protégé Ed Jew, obtained hearsay claims from a friend of the neighbor that the Yees agreed to drop an official protest against the project in exchange for $20,000 in cash and donated remodeling work on the Yees' property. Planning Department records show Maxine Yee signing off on an agreement to rescind her appeal based on changes her neighbors made in their own building plans.
I told Stearns I planned to write about these issues, and asked whether he would reveal the name of the Yees' mortgage brokers. I also asked if Yee might instruct his neighbors, whom I had been trying to contact, that they were free to reveal the exact nature of the settlement deal they had reached with the Yees.
"Not only do we not see the point of revisiting this nonissue, we do not trust, based on previous experience, that the Weekly will respect the Yees' legitimate financial privacy concerns. So, the answer to both your questions is no," Stearns responded in an e-mail.
Leland Yee can be helpful when it suits him. To the right constituents, he has demonstrated that he can be kind and loyal. But there's nothing in his public record that suggests the virtues that might justify a city overlooking his past.
Leland Yee is the worst backstabber. During the Ed Jew debacle, the Chron ran an article about who "fingered Ed." Although Ed Jew as Yee's political hack, it was Leland Yee who stabbed Jew in the back when he went to the FBI to rat Ed out. I guess Ed failed to do Leland's bidding so he was expendable. I will not be voting for this phony.
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same old rumors and who has not made a mistake in the past. what is proven is his hard work as school board member, san francisco supervisor, california assemblyman and now as california senator. his community involvement is vast and varied. he votes on what the people want and does his work based on this input. but keep up the good work trashing people in your articles instead of focusing on the now and for the future of san francisco. let the educated voters assess which candidates are worthy of the one-three votes this november. senator yee has my vote, as i always evaluate and choose accordingly. this san francisco native is definitely going along with senator yee -- will you.
This is over the top. Only focus the bad. The large illustration all you need is a mustache. He would become Hitler.
Somebody doesn't like Leland Yee much.....I expect no less from the idiots who wrote a fictional piece on Barry Bonds (disguised like a true story) when he repeatedly blew off their requests for an interview. The SF Weakly tends to sensational, which turns off anyone concerned with true journalism in the Bay Area
Really Matt? Not even the pretense of actual journalism here, just slingin' the sleaze, eh? You had plenty of opportunities to enlighten your readers about the man, and yet chose to run with 20 year old stories and fling around a few unsubstantiated rumors? Beyond sleaze.
In an election like this with so many important issues, we need real journalists reporting actual news. You think Yee is dirty, dig it up and dazzle us with the facts. This shit is pathetic.
Free speech? When has he ever stood for free speech? The ban on videogames violated the First Amendment -- a HUGE majority of the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the law. You can't get any more anti-free speech than that.
And now the video game manufacturers are trying to stick the attorney fees to the State of CA for a clearly illegal law. Thanks for the extra debt Leland!
The Constitution allows for minors to buy video games? What foresight! Seriously dude, the law didn't ban video games, it did not allow children to buy them. You might want to check the facts before being such a drama queen.
The Constitution allows every freedom that it doesn't specifically leave up to government to regulate. See the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Bill of Rights:
IX - "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
X - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Governments have no moral right to overrule parents and say that children cannot buy certain video games even if their parents have given them permission to buy them.
Porn was already ruled not for children decades ago. To treat video games the same as porn and different from books and movies would've been asinine and you know it.
Yee pushing a ridiculous law on video games that has gone on to be proved unconstitutional multiple times is enough reason for me not to vote for him. This stuff is just fuel to the fire. I didn't know this state and SF had so few problems that we needed someone to be the face of the non-existant video game lobby.
The idiots writing anti-video game laws will go down in the same reactionary, backwards chapter in history books where people against Elvis are cited.
Let us not forget about Yee's constant attempts to sell out the Cow Palace to private developers, none of whom, I'm sure, donate to his campaign.
I seriously question the credibility of a newspaper that's half med. marijuana ads and half "exotic masseuse" ads. If you're going to criticize Yee, you're not going to rely on assumed intentions from scattered events; otherwise this is just a political lowblow and isn't going to be taken seriously.
Hey, selling marijuana or sex is honest -- unlike Leland Yee, if even half of the stuff about him in the SF Weekly story is true.
what a load of krap. i don't know anything about this guy nor do I care. i got about three paragraphs into it and the snarkiness and bullshit got to me. what a waste of time. they even designed graphics for this piece of shit article.
Given all of his failings, he does not look much worse than anyone else. I am not too happy with the saints out there.
I want the truth, I am sick and tired of being blind sided by our politicians. When we know the truth, then we can make an informed decision.
@Greg - agreed. Someone wrote this with a political hit for Yee. Of all possible "transgressions" someone can committ, I think this is relatively harmless. And is being sensationalized.
Wow. I mean... wow. I've never seen anything like this. This is just the most nasty, vicious political hit piece I have ever seen, including the Matt Gonzalez piece. That one was written in Matt Smith's usual trashy, sly, underhanded snarky style. But at least it had a style. This was just plain mean -short on facts and full of unsupported innuendo. And nasty. Just overboard on the nasty.
And I hate to pull out the race card, but dude... that image of Leland in the uniform with the red tie makes him look like a cross between Adolf Hitler and some communist Chinese soldier. One would like to believe that the evocative imagery is purely accidental, but accompanied by a hit piece like this, I think that would be naive.
I can see from some of the other comments that even opponents of Leland Yee are keeping their distance from this. Smart move on their part, because this is just over the top.
Look, I think Yee is all right. Not as progressive as I would like, but better than the politicians who are coming out of the corrupt city hall establishment. So maybe I'm biased. But I would think that a normal person who picked this up and read it, having never heard of Leland Yee or Matt Smith, would just be repulsed by it. I'd be thinking, who is this guy Smith and what is his agenda? Is he shilling for another candidate, or is it just plain Hate?
Leland is probably the most harmless of the current crop. Matt lays into him as he did with Matt Gonzalez.
Everyone from the system running in the race is filtly, but I think that Yee will be less damaging than Dufty, Chiu, Herrera, etc.'
Mission Bay was not Willie Brown's accomplishment — although he did do a dirty job as a railway lawyer in selling contaminated land.
I think it looks awful, but Smith revels in tack (including his often unfair, often below-the-belt smearing attacks on people).
Leland's record has to be balanced against the ethical lapses of the people behind Ed Lee.
At least with Leland, it is just him. With Ed Lee, we're continuing to enable the Brown/Pak/Kawa corrupt operation.
I'm not sure repeating Leland's personal indiscretions makes sense anymore. Everyone seems to have decided that they aren't true or that they don't matter, and they're right. What matters is that Leland has become a media driven political weathervane with a disease-of-the-week policy agenda.
Here's the thing about a weathervane: it always points in the direction of the wind. Sometimes the wind is in your face; but sometimes it's at your back, too.
That's why a lot of voters (who feel they've been shut out by Newsom, and before him, Brown & Jordan) really like Leland Yee. Because they all have a seat at the table. His coalition is unusually broad. The cost of that broadness is ideological elasticity.
You call that unprincipled. But if your principles are opposed to mine, that suits me and the rest of my voting bloc just fine.
I've been governed by a District 2 Marina millionaire for the past 8 years. And before him, a vicious Downtown powerbroker. Compared to the status quo, Leland Yee looks fantastic.
Yee frquently voted with mobile home park owners versus low income mobile home dwellers (many of them seniors), who live in San Mateo county and of course the rest of California. He is what is know as a "blue dog" i.e. right wing Democrat.
Leland Yee is one shady character that does not have the best interests in mind for most of San Francisco's voters. From his flip-flop on the shark fin soup controversy, to his pandering to unions, he has proven time and time again to be an untrustworthy character. Personally, I didn't trust him given his over the top stance refuting there was a need for pension reform during the Prop B campaign. He was a sock puppet for public employees, and look where we are today... clearly there is a problem as the public employees were even forced to put something on the ballot. Yet another Yee flip-flop in the making once he makes one comment on the record regarding this issue.
Yee made me really uncomfortable when the shark fin bill was going through the state legislature. He first stood aside local Chinese restaurant owners in allowing the continued use of the fins, then after much heat, backs away.
Long time SF resident, who is familiar with Mr Yee's virtues and demons, appreciates that the truth be told. But will continue to support Mr.Yee because despite his blunders and errors in judgment, he understands and fights for the average citizen and his heart is in the right place.
Every election year we go through this.
Every election year the local print rags start playing an album called Leland Yee's Greatest Hits. Mortagehookersuntanblahblahblah.
And every time the electorate decides it doesn't care.
Every. Single. Time.
What you're telling us with all this repetition is that, for the past two decades, we've been gullible rubes.
And in November, when Yee inevitably wins (again) the Chron & Weekly will be shaking their heads (again) wondering why we never heeded their advice.
One of these days its going to dawn on you.
We'd like to welcome everyone to the comments section, and encourage the open discussion of this issue.
However, we noted multiple comments from the same IP address but using multiple commenting IDs. We have deleted those comments, and will continue to monitor this section. Users who post from the same IP using multiple names -- i.e. "sock puppets" -- will be deleted and banned from posting.
Thanks for your understanding,SF Weekly
Hahaha, that is hilarious yet predictable. It would be a stretch to suggest that Leland Yee is posting multiple posts himself, but I'm not surprised at all that his supporters have adopted such pathetic and unethical tactics.
Then you would be shocked to know that the banned posts were obviously not from a Yee supporter because they were anti-Yee in content.
It was really obvious who made them:
leland yee = worst possible candidate for mayor.
btw...that boy scout picture sure looks creepy (hint...hint...NAZI...).
I can't stand Leland Yee. how was he even elected before with all these nasty skeletons in his closet. sounds to me like he's a big sleez ball. hope he isn't elected mayor, or SF is done for.
Sketchy is not the word that I word I would use to describe Leeland's activities. He is the last guy I want to run our city. Keep San Francisco's name clean.
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