This is the fifth time David Lee has run for office in San Francisco. He has not yet won. He has not yet, to be fair, come close to winning.
But his presence in past races has determined the winner. And, as he runs for District 4 supervisor in June, his candidacy could be eventful, regardless of where he eventually places.
Lee, 57, first ran for office in 2012 when he threw his hat in the ring for the District 1 supervisor seat. He did this two more times, in 2016 and 2020. In 2024, he set his sights on the State Assembly, but came second to Catherine Stefani, trailing by some 38,000 votes.
By now, Lee has established some degree of name recognition. More than 14,000 District 4 residents voted for him in his State Assembly race in 2024.
And just because he hasn’t been successful doesn’t mean he hasn’t been consequential: In 2020, he and District 1 aspirant Connie Chan agreed upon a ranked-choice strategy. Chan edged out Marjan Philhour by just 125 votes.
“David was instrumental in bringing Connie over the finish line,” said former District 1 supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, who beat Lee in his 2016 run for the District 1 seat — his second of three attempts at the position.
Now a District 4 candidate after moving to the Sunset in September, Lee is no longer running for supervisor in his long-time home district of the Richmond.
When asked about his repeated runs for office at a March forum, Lee pointed to buying a retirement home for $1.6 million in the Sunset after his adult kids moved away. (He still owns two apartment buildings in the Richmond.)
“That’s not a small investment,” he said. “Sunset has been my cultural home. It’s where my friends are, it’s where my family is. We have deep connections.”
If Lee were to prevail in June’s contest, it would create the surreal scenario of him following Joel Engardio to become the second consecutive elected District 4 supervisor who ran unsuccessfully in another district three times. (Engardio lived in, and unsuccessfully ran to represent, District 7 before his block was grafted onto District 4 in 2022.)
But in a move that has rankled fellow challengers of appointed incumbent Supervisor Alan Wong, Lee is now eschewing a ranked-choice strategy in this ranked-choice election.
“I’m running as an independent to win,” he said. “I’ll leave it to voters to decide.”
In the crowded, contested race in District 4, it is nearly impossible for Lee — or any candidates — to win without others’ secondary votes.
“You need second-place votes to win in a race like that,” said Jim Ross, a campaign consultant, who worked on Lee’s 2012 campaign.
But Lee’s refusal to commit may not be an issue. “You don’t necessarily need to have an alliance with people to get second-place votes,” Ross said. The second-place votes will come anyway, whether you ask for them or not.
Lee is facing opponents including Supervisor Wong, who has the mayor’s support and over $1 million in PAC money backing him, mostly from Lurie’s wealthy allies. Also among the front-runners is Natalie Gee, who is boosted by labor unions.
Albert Chow, who has gained sizable grassroots support thanks to his involvement in the Engardio recall and Great Highway fights, is also running, as is Jeremy Greco, the lone pro-Sunset-Dunes candidate.
The second-place votes from Lee’s supporters could be pivotal for others in the race, if Lee is eliminated in earlier rounds.
Three other candidates — Gee, Chow and Greco — have formed an “anyone-but-Alan” alliance, calling out Wong’s third-party backing from wealthy donors.
While Lee aligned himself with those candidates to attack Wong at a debate, he seemed to also keep his distance: He canceled his appearance with the others at the last minute in April when the group held a press conference denouncing Wong for receiving support from SF Believes, a Lurie-aligned PAC backed by $250,000 from a pro-Trump MAGA donor.
Wong, for his part, also did not commit to a ranked-choice alliance.
Lee has raised nearly $100,000 as of May 21, and is benefitting from another $193,000 in third-party spending from a PAC named Asian American for Representation. The PAC is funded mostly by $165,000 from Melissa Ma, a partner at an investment consulting firm.
The Rec and Parks commissioner
Since 1993, Lee has been the head of the nonprofit Chinese American Voters Education Committee, and he served as a San Francisco Recreation and Parks commissioner from 2005 to 2012.
Lee had a mixed history on the commission: Supporters, like retired judge Lillian Sing, have praised his work advocating for initiatives serving the Asian American community.
But records show Lee failed to disclose income from his nonprofit, as required by the city: During Lee’s tenure as parks commissioner between 2005 and 2012, he was paid between $51,000 to $91,000 a year by his nonprofit.
Lee only disclosed the income once, out of the six yearly disclosures he filed. When asked about it by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in 2012, Lee’s campaign said it was “a mistake.” He filed an amendment to correct it in 2012, after he resigned as commissioner to run for office.
In a recent interview, Lee said he “received some legal advice that needed correction.” He was told he did not need to report the income because it was not “taxpayer-funded” or “had anything to do at all with the city.” The purpose of financial disclosures, however, was to report financial interests outside of city work to avoid conflict of interest.
Lee looks back on his time on the commission with pride. He says he worked on building playgrounds and parks in the Sunset, including the Sunset Recreation Center, McCoppin Square, and Sava Pool, which he called “a model for pools built all over the city.”
But when Lee was up for reappointment for his seat in 2009, then-District 9 Supervisor David Campos moved to reject him.
Lee hadn’t “met the threshold” of a commissioner who is committed to “reaching out to people” who rely on the city’s parks, Campos said. Lee didn’t show up to that Rules Committee meeting to hear the criticism, citing a scheduling conflict.
“I want to see a commissioner who’s engaged in his or her role … who I know would go out of his or her way to engage the public before major decisions are made,” Campos said to the Rules Committee at the time. “I haven’t seen that [in Lee].”
Campos’ move to spike Lee failed. Lee continued to serve as commissioner until 2012.
Political calculations of a serial candidate
Although Lee isn’t considered a frontrunner in this June’s District 4 supervisor race, he’s no unknown.
In the 2024 State Assembly race against Stefani, prominent politicians and allies within the Asian American community threw their weight behind Lee, partly because the district had no other prominent Asian candidate. His supporters included Phil Ting, Aaron Peskin, Norman Yee and Fewer.
Fewer now endorses both Lee and Gee in the District 4 election. “This race is a very short race,” she explained. “While others have to work hard to get their names out, David was already out there [from his 2024 Assembly run]. He is a little ahead of the game.”
Besides winning name recognition during his many campaigns, Lee has long been seizing opportunities via his role as executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee.
Since the 1990s, Lee and volunteers with his nonprofit would show up to naturalization ceremonies to get new voters’ information. The nonprofit then sent them vote-by-mail applications and voter registration cards in Chinese, often showing Lee’s face prominently — much like a campaign flyer. (Lee said he doesn’t do this when running for office.)
After elections, Lee conducted Chinese voter analysis and shared his thoughts in news articles, including in the New York Times.
But in 2012, when Lee was running against Eric Mar for District 1 supervisor, two co-founders of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee spoke out against him. Henry Der, a longtime activist with Chinese for Affirmative Action, held a press conference questioning Lee’s use of the nonprofit’s funds.
Der accused Lee of “draining” funds from the organization for his personal gain: Lee had received increasing compensation, ranging from $51,000 to $92,000 — at times over 60 percent of the nonprofit’s entire expenses — while the nonprofit’s financial outlook was on the decline.
Lee’s wife, who runs a State Farm insurance practice in the Richmond, was also on the nonprofit’s payroll in the early 2000s. (Lee stopped receiving compensation in 2016, according to the nonprofit’s tax returns.)
Der also questioned Lee’s statement on a mailer that he was responsible for registering over 100,000 voters in San Francisco. Der said he was “bothered” that Lee inflated the number, and may have taken credit for work that other organizations and volunteers had done.
Lee still says he has registered “over 100,000 people” to vote, including “many thousands of people” in District 4. On the nonprofit’s Chinese-language website, though, the number of voters is listed at 10,000 — Lee told Mission Local that the 10,000 number was a mistake. Because he has been leading the organization for over 30 years, Lee said, the 100,000 count is “totally achievable.”
Lee as an educator
“What I said [in 2012] was pretty pointed, pretty harsh,” Der said in an interview recently. Der said Lee was “cozy with downtown real estate interests” in his 2012 run, and played up crime in the Richmond, depicting it as “a terrible place,” even though it was the safest neighborhood in the city.
But today Der supports Lee. What changed Der’s mind, he said, was Lee’s work at Laney College, the Oakland community college that primarily serves low-income students.
For eight years, Lee was the director of the Asian American Pacific Student Success Center at Laney, which helped students learn English and job skills. He left the job last fall after the center lost its federal funding for minority students under the Trump administration.
Others were also impressed. After Lee lost to Fewer in 2016, Lee began inviting her to speak to his class at Laney. “These were all immigrant students, first-generation college-goers,” Fewer said. “After that, I really developed a different perspective of him. He’s trying to do the right thing.”
Huizhen Su, who worked with Lee at Laney as a staff assistant from 2017 to 2025, agreed, describing Lee as someone “who really cares about the students.”
“He helped them fight for benefits,” Su said in Mandarin. “He was willing to stand up for the students.”
“Someone like David understands the challenges of working-class Chinese Americans,” Der said. “We are not fancy people. We know what it is like to struggle.”
And, Der said, “People can change, if they’re sincere about it.”
