He made that promise to the public before he was appointed interim mayor near the beginning of the year. He was stepping in for the remainder of the previous mayor’s term, and Rose Pak was instrumental in shoehorning him into the role.
She was also instrumental in having him renege on his promise not to run this time, Peskin said in the interviews. She did so through an illegal funding body calling itself “Progress for All,” Peskin said.
Peskin laid out the allegations of campaign misconduct in a 37-page letter to the city’s Ethics Commission on July 28.
Progress for All, using a loophole in campaign finance laws, plowed thousands of dollars into pro-Lee advertising from a series of special interest donors before Lee was officially a candidate. Pak was the unofficial backer of the organization.
Some of those donors would benefit materially from Lee’s continued time at the helm, Peskin says—not least of them, Pak.
“It is troubling because it is very apparent from the day he was appointed, to this day, that he is controlled by other people.”
Peskin says he has known Lee for years. “Ed Lee is a decent man, but as the candidate for mayor, Ed Lee is not his own man,” Peskin said. “He is somebody who is doing the work for the real leader of San Francisco, first and foremost, that is, Rose Pak.”
