Nevius: San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was a mayor who wasn’t a politician

Ed Lee loved corny jokes, local sports teams and playing golf.

Being mayor? Eh, maybe not so much.

I got to know Lee in 2011, when he was an anonymous city bureaucrat who had just been appointed mayor and I was writing a city politics column for the San Francisco Chronicle.

That year, Lee was enthusiastically promoted for the office by the late Rose Pak, his longtime ally and Chinatown political powerhouse. You wouldn’t say he was a reluctant candidate. His heels only left small skid marks as Pak shoved him into the spotlight.

That was when Mayor Gavin Newsom resigned to become lieutenant governor. The Board of Supervisors had to appoint someone to hold the office until the regular election, 11 months in the future.

Easy Ed, a nice, nonpolitical guy and former head of Public Works, seemed like a safe, nonthreatening choice. But before they voted him in, just to be sure, the Board made him promise he wouldn’t run for mayor.

The fiery Pak, of course, wasn’t having it. She was hell-bent on electing San Francisco’s first Asian mayor, and she pushed Lee relentlessly. When venture capitalist Ron Conway signed on for financial support, Lee broke his promise and announced he would run for the 2012 term.

A lot of people never forgave him. I never got that.

Lee came into office in a recession. Unemployment was trending toward double digits. Tech game-changers like Lyft and Uber were barely concepts.

And things got better. Lee had some ideas - give tech companies a tax break to locate in the war zone that was mid-Market Street. He also benefited from a national recovery.

But the point was: if things are going well, and we have a mayor people like, why shouldn’t he serve a four-year term?

In one of those define-the-city elections, Lee’s opponent was progressive firebrand John Avalos. When he lost to Lee by ?10 percentage points, it made you think San Francisco wasn’t quite as crazy and out there as advertised.

Once in office Mayor Lee was a bit of a work in progress. He tended to begin speeches - regardless of topic - by shouting, “How about those (fill in name of currently trending local sports team)?”

Rhetoric did not soar, hearts were not set to fluttering. He had a tendency toward malaprops. One year he informed a big crowd at a Warriors’ tip-off luncheon that they’d all be getting a “bobby-head” doll when they left.

But what did we expect? This was a man who had never been elected to public office in his life.

Of course, one thing about being mayor in San Francisco. You don’t have to search out controversies. They come at you, unbidden, at 100 mph.

The building of the Warriors new arena had fits and starts, there were gripes about the cost and location of the new central subway. (Odd that it goes virtually to the front door of Rose Pak, critics said.)

And tragically, shootings of unarmed black citizens by the police kicked off citywide protests and resulted in the dismissal of Police Chief Greg Suhr.

Lee didn’t hold Willie Brown/Newsom-style press conferences - spellbinding lectures on the values and virtues of the city. Instead, he got in a car and went down to talk to the protesters. (Who, missing a golden photo op, refused to meet him.)

That was Lee. If something was broken, his default response was to make it work. One of his proudest achievements was the creation of the “Fix-it Team.” It was an on-call group that took complaints from the neighborhoods. They repaired potholes, replaced street lights and cleaned up trash. And, as a recent Chronicle column noted, sometimes Lee joined them, wearing a reflective vest and pitching in.

I once played golf with Lee, which I only mention because you can tell a lot about someone from a round of golf. Lee was - no surprise - not a club-thrower. When he hit a bad shot he wasn’t mad, just bemused and mildly disappointed.

Neither of us was going to qualify for the U.S. Open, but we hacked it around in as pleasant a morning as you are likely to enjoy. It was a fine, low-key, no-politics experience. We always said we were going to play again.

On the night Donald Trump won the election, I saw Lee at a downtown party and he waved me over. It was supposed to be all set, he said. When Hillary Clinton won the presidency, he was going to go to Washington with her - probably for a cabinet post.

That had been the rumor for a while. At one point he was asked if he was on Clinton’s “short list.”

“At my height (5 feet 5 inches) I’m always on the short list,” he said.

But now, he said, it’s not going to happen. He was going to go back to being mayor. He sounded a little resigned.

But it should be said that Lee won three elections - one with the Board of Supervisors, and two citywide. If he’d finished his second term, he would have been the second-longest serving San Francisco mayor in 70 years.

And the “Ed Lee era” can boast some accomplishments. He got the Warriors’ arena located, pushed affordable housing and improved the blighted stretch of mid-Market.

Of course, everyone will have their own memories. Mine is a time after an interview in his office. When we finished he told me to wait. He left and came back with golf balls and two putters.

We went to the long, long hall outside his office. A cup had been set up at the far end of the carpet and he wanted to know if I’d be interested in a putting contest.

Of course, I would. I went first and left the ball pretty close. Lee’s approach was also right there, but it seemed to me, at that distance, mine was closer.

“Nope,” said an aide, sweeping both balls away, “the mayor always wins.”

So here’s to rounds of golf left unplayed.

Godspeed, Mr. Mayor.

You can reach columnist C.W. Nevius at cw.nevius@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @cwnevius