GAPA Early Endorses SF Mayor

A club for gay Asian and Pacific Islander men in the Bay Area has come out with an early endorsement for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee's re-election bid.

After Lee met with the board of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance at its December 9 meeting, the members voted to back Lee's 2015 mayoral campaign.

"Mayor Lee has proven himself to be an effective leader, he has taken the city in the right direction," Benjamin Leong, who stepped down this month as GAPA's co-chair, told the Bay Area Reporter . "The economy is up and unemployment is down. And we would like to see this trend continue."

Leong added that since Lee became the city's interim mayor in 2011, and then won a full four-year term that November, he has been a leader for both the LGBT and API communities.

"He has been a leader for the San Francisco community," wrote Leong in an emailed response. "Mayor Lee has been a leader for the Bay Area and the region and that is why GAPA has come out and gave an early, sole endorsement of Mayor Lee."

In doing so GAPA is the first major LGBT group in the city to announce its support of Lee's re-election campaign, whose slogan is "Ed Lee. He's for Me."

Neither of the city's two main LGBT Democratic clubs - Alice B. Toklas and Harvey Milk - is currently looking to early endorse the mayor. In 2011 Alice gave Lee its third choice endorsement under the city's ranked-choice voting system, and Milk altogether snubbed the mayor, who at first had insisted he would not seek election to a full term.

Alice co-chair Zoe Dunning told the B.A.R. last week that it was "undetermined" if the more moderate political club would follow GAPA's lead. No board member has yet requested that Alice consider early endorsing Lee.

Should someone do so, the club's political action committee, by a 66 percent vote, would then need to recommend that the membership hold an early endorsement vote, otherwise it would be rejected. The threshold for approving such a vote by the membership would then drop to 60 percent, and if met, the club would then consider early endorsing Lee.

"No one has done so or indicated doing this right now," said Dunning, a mayoral appointee to the city's library commission who has yet to personally endorse Lee. "I am waiting to see where Alice goes first."

Tom Temprano, the Milk club's outgoing co-president, said the progressive group only in "very rare circumstances" makes early endorsements.

"I don't personally see an early endorsement of Mayor Lee being one of those rare circumstances," he said. "If the mayor wants to come address the club, which he hasn't done in his four years in office, I am sure the club would come listen."

In terms of the mayoral race next year, Temprano said there are "certainly a number of club members would like to see some alternative candidate to the mayor."

After flirting with the idea of challenging Lee, gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) in November nixed doing so. Gay former Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who has twice run for mayor, could jump into the race.

While he has already pulled papers to run for Leno's Senate seat in 2016, when Leno will be termed out of office, the progressive Ammiano told the San Francisco Chronicle last week that he has not yet ruled out another mayoral bid.

Unless Ammiano or another progressive announces their campaign in the coming months, the Milk club likely will wait until the filing deadline for the mayoral race closes next summer before it endorses, said Temprano.

"The most likely scenario is the club will be endorsing in the mayor's race at the regular endorsement meeting in August," he predicted.