Sen. Leland Yee and the politics of pay to play
Yee leaving federal court house after being booked CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
California State Sen. Leland Yee was arrested at his San Francisco home by the FBI on March 26, 2014 on seven federal felony charges related to public corruption and gun trafficking charges, specifically with attempting to facilitate the purchase of automatic firearms and shoulder-launched missiles from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to smuggle into the US.
Of the seven felony charges filed against Yee, six were for “scheming to deprive his constituents of his honest services,” each punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison. The charges relate to violations of a 1988 federal law prohibiting the exchange of political contributions for specific benefits.
Yee – first ‘Filipino’ in California Legislature
Before Rob Bonta became the first Filipino to ever be elected to the California Legislature when he was elected to the Assembly in 2012, Leland Yee held that distinction, except for the notable detail that Yee is not a Filipino.
But in the state assembly and in the state senate, Yee represented a district with a sizeable Filipino population, which included Daly City, otherwise known as “Adobo City.” He had been a ubiquitous presence in Filipino community events and, for the last seven years, his weekly columns, with his smiling photo, appeared in almost all of the Bay Area Filipino community newspapers. Almost every Filipino community leader in San Mateo has received an official certificate of appreciation from Yee.
Yee was a particular favorite of the local Philippine Consulate where he appeared regularly at consular events often as the featured guest speaker. At the last Independence Day celebration held at the San Francisco Intercontinental Hotel on June 12, 2013, Sen. Yee lavishly praised outgoing Consul General Marciano Paynor, Jr., disclosing that he had big plans for Paynor after the latter retired from the Foreign Service.
Yee raised more money from the Filipino community (far greater than that obtained by any Filipino candidate) for his various campaigns for public office. This is an amazing achievement as the Filipino community is notoriously cheap when it comes to contributing to political campaigns unlike the Chinese, Indian and Jewish communities. It is not uncommon when Filipinos are asked to contribute to political campaigns to hear the reply, “You’re already not giving me money to vote for you, you want money from me to vote for you? That’s ridiculous!” [And we wonder why there are so few Filipinos in public office in the US?]
Yee’s political career
Yee’s meteoric political career began with an eigh-year stint in the San Francisco School Board from 1988 to 1996, followed by six years in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1996 to 2002, followed by four years in the California State Assembly from 2002 to 2006, and then winning a State Senate seat from 2006 to 2014.
Yee’s only loss came in the November 2011 San Francisco mayoral race when he lost to fellow Chinese American Ed Lee. Though he locked up the political endorsement of the Filipino community of San Mateo County, he placed a surprising fifth place in the tight mayoral race. (Unfortunately for Yee, San Mateo residents don’t vote in San Francisco elections). But that loss did not deter him from announcing a year later that he was seeking election as Secretary of State in this year’s California state elections.
I first met Yee in 1988 when he was a candidate for the School Board and I was the president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission appointed by then Mayor Art Agnos. We would often be invited to the same Filipino community events including those hosted by the local organization of Filipino educators.
I asked the Filipino schoolteachers why they invited only Yee to their events and not the other six School Board members. They replied it was because they only liked Yee. But I asked them how they could get the School Board to consider their issues (protection against discrimination, promotion to principal or other high office) if they didn’t speak to them. They didn’t care, and Yee loved the fact that he was the only school board member the Filipino teachers endorsed and raised money for.
Yee vs. City College
I was appointed to a vacancy in the San Francisco College Board in 1991 and ran for the College Board in 1992 becoming the first Filipino elected to public office in San Francisco. After winning reelection1996, I was elected as the College Board president in 1998. In April of that year, we were on the verge of acquiring two major sites to build our long-awaited Chinatown and Mission campuses to move out of the substandard old elementary school buildings we were renting from the School Board.
We had won a $10M bond measure in the 2007 citywide elections and we needed the money to secure the campus sites, but we only had slim window of time to buy the sites or we would lose our option. All that was necessary to secure the $10M was for the Board of Supervisors to approve the transfer, which was a routine procedure. But before the Board could approve it, the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee had to approve the resolution first, and that committee was headed by Supervisor Yee.
Not so fast, Yee told us in a conference call. He said he would only approve the resolution if City College agreed to pay the $150,000 attorney’s fees of the group (Friends of the Colombo Building) that filed a nuisance suit against City College. The suit was funded by the owner of the Montgomery Towers, which was located across the street from the Colombo Bldg. The owner already extracted concessions about the height of our campus in his suit, but he wanted more. Through Yee, he wanted City College to pay his attorneys fees.
Yee had us over a barrel. If we said no and denounced him, we would lose the option to purchase the buildings, so we very reluctantly agreed to his extortion. We got our bond money and purchased the prized sites. But the foul experience with Yee left a bad taste in our mouths. I recall assuring my other College Board members that Yee would never get far politically because he had placed the interests of his financial contributors over the needs of the community, which desperately wanted us to build the two campuses.
How wrong I was.
Pay to play at work
With campaign contributions from folks like the Montgomery Towers developer-owner, Yee easily won election to the State Assembly in 2004 and reelection in 2006.
At the beginning of his second term in 2007, we secured a site to build our City College Chinatown campus, on the other side of the Colombo Bldg. But Justice Investors, the owners of the San Francisco Chinatown Hilton Hotel, opposed our plans to build a 17-story structure with 42 classrooms to accommodate our 7,000 students. They wanted it limited to seven stories so that the hotel’s views would not be obstructed.
One of their main weapons against us was State Assemblyman Yee, who held a press conference in Chinatown denouncing our plan to build a 17-story building falsely claiming it would cast a giant shadow over Portsmouth Square. Yee had read the study, which showed that the proposed building’s shadow would only affect a narrow sliver of the northwest corner of the park, and for a very limited period of time during the summer, and no later than 7:45 a.m.
The height of hypocrisy for Yee is that it was the 31-story Hilton Hotel Chinatown, across from Portsmouth Square, which casts the overwhelming shadow over the park, all day long and all year round. But Justice Investors contributed a reported $40,000 to Yee’s campaign and those were the only figures that mattered to him. [By the way, the 17-story building of what is officially called the Chinatown-North Beach-Manilatown campus has been open now for the last two years].
In an article written by John Cote after Yee’s arrest, the San Francisco Chronicle documented this connection (“Linking Calif. Sen. Yee’s voting record to major donations”, March 29, 2014). Some of the examples cited:
•In May 2003, Yee voted against a bill that would introduce competition in the wholesale gasoline market, a move that would benefit consumers. Yee voted against the bill and received $30,00 from oil and gas interests shortly after his vote killed the bill.
•In August 2003, Yee voted against a bill that would impose state air pollution regulation on farm equipment. Soon after his vote, state agricultural interests donated almost $29,500 to his campaign.
•In January 2004, Yee voted against a bill that would regulate the cost of prescription drugs. Yee received $46,000 in campaign contributions from opponents of the bill.
•In August of 2004, Yee vote against a fee on railroads to fund new emission reduction programs to meet federal clean air standards. Soon after his vote, Yee received $22,400 from the BNSF Railway Co.
•In January 2006, Yee voted against a bill banning the toxic chemical BPA from children’s products. Soon after his vote, Yee received $22,400 in campaign contributions from the Dow Chemical Co.
•In September 2007, Yee voted against a bill prohibiting workplace use of the chemical diacetyl, which has been linked to serious respiratory illness. Soon after his vote, Yee received $69,000 in campaign contributions from chemical companies opposed to the bill.-
•In August 2008, Yee voted against a bill prohibiting insurance carriers from rescinding a patient’s coverage unless there was fraud. Yee received more than $116,000 in campaign contributions from insurance companies opposed to the bill.
Sen. Yee’s efforts to stop City College from building a Chinatown campus earned Yee the enmity of his own community. All the Chinese community newspapers published a full-page ad denouncing Yee for going against the interests of his own community. Yee was roundly booed in one Chinese community event.
But Yee didn’t care because the Filipino community adored him. Well, not everyone. On April 2, 2007, I wrote an article that appeared in a number of Filipino community newspapers denouncing Yee’s actions against City College, which has the largest Filipino student population of any college outside the Philippines (about 4,000). It appeared in the Inquirer.net on April 4, 2007.
After my article appeared, Yee’s chief of staff prepared a response that was a personal attack against me that appeared under the name of a Daly City candidate endorsed by Yee and later under the name of Yee’s pal, Supervisor Aaron Peskin. Yee’s response was published in all the Filipino community newspapers even though it did not refute any of the facts I outlined in my article.
Yee – a regular Filipino community newspaper columnist
But Yee asked another favor from the Filipino community newspapers that published his side of the story. He asked to be given a regular weekly column in all the Filipino community newspapers, and the publishers all agreed to allow him to have a weekly column likely written by some junior member of his staff. It was great free publicity for Yee. His articles have regularly appeared in all these newspapers for the last seven years, at least until this last week.
But his pay to play politics eventually caught up with him. Yee needed to raise $800,000 for his Secretary of State primary race and he also needed to retire the $70,000 debt he accumulated in his failed bid to run for mayor of San Francisco.
Among the six federal charges against Yee was one when he solicited $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a real estate developer who had already illegally funneled $11,000 to Yee’s campaign, with Yee on tape boasting to the agent that “there’s tremendous opportunity in local levels … because whoever’s gonna be the mayor controls everything.”
As Cote wrote in his Chronicle article, the federal charges against Yee present a portrait of “a man driven by money who was willing to skirt campaign finance laws, collect cash for meetings, trade political favors for donations, and even promise to facilitate an international arms deal worth up to $2.5 million.”
“It’s pay-to-play politics at its worst,” said David Lee, a San Francisco State University political science instructor. “It also speaks to someone who was desperate to hold on to power at any cost.”
What goes around comes around.
(Send comments to [email protected] or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call 415.334.7800).
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