S.F. Mayor Ed Lee may have no challengers in re-election bid

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Mayor Ed Lee?

State Sen. Mark Leno has decided not to challenge Lee in the mayor’s race next year — and so far, it’s looking like nobody else wants to enter the fray. All the most likely suspects, from City Attorney Dennis Herrera to Public Defender Jeff Adachi to former Mayor Art Agnos and former Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, are saying, “No, thanks.”

What makes Lee such a daunting, seemingly invincible candidate? (Thankfully, one who opts to don suits rather than tights and a cape.)

After all, nothing about the 5-foot-5 former city administrator known for his bushy mustache, corny jokes and choice of Chevy Volt as his official mayoral vehicle screams, “Don’t mess with me!”

Lee didn’t even want the job when he was appointed interim mayor, had to be persuaded to run for a four-year term and studiously avoids the limelight. He’s far more likely to attend a neighborhood ribbon-cutting than appear on national television.

And yet, he’s considered pretty much unbeatable in the November mayor’s race. That determination is largely what led political consultant John Whitehurst and his partners to tell Leno, a longtime client, they wouldn’t run his campaign if he challenged Lee.

Whitehurst acknowledged that Lee is an unlikely political Goliath, noting it’s surprising the former bureaucrat “has become one of the most formidable politicians in San Francisco.”

Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who had encouraged Leno to run, said Lee isn’t invincible, he’s just really good at staying off the radar.

“It’s kind of 'keep your head low, keep your head out of the press, don’t do anything,’” Peskin said of Lee’s style. “It’s kind of the hegemony of nothingness.”

Whether he’s invincible or has just lulled potential opponents into a deep slumber, Lee has several things working in his favor.

Incumbency: Elected officials almost always win re-election in San Francisco, including all the supervisors who were on the ballot last month. In fact, it’s been 19 years — a lifetime in politics — since a San Francisco mayor lost a bid for re-election.

Former police chief Frank Jordan lost the mayor’s seat to Assembly leader Willie Brown in 1995. Jordan had a shaky first term, was seen by some as steering the city too far to the right, and made the still-unbelievable choice to jump in a shower stark naked with two disc jockeys and sing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” on live radio just weeks before the election.

In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Brown’s successor, had just weathered an embarassing sex scandal and trip to rehab for alcohol addiction. And still, he easily won re-election.

We doubt that Lee will be caught up in any sex scandals or head to rehab in the next year. But a word to the wise: avoid showering with DJs.

Chinese support: Twenty percent of the city’s voters are Chinese American. And they love Lee.

David Lee, a political science instructor at San Francisco State University and the head of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, said the local Chinese press covers the city’s first Chinese American mayor glowingly and that polls of Chinese voters consistently show a favorability rate for the mayor of higher than 70 percent.

The mayor campaigned heavily in Chinese neighborhoods for the five ballot measures he supported last month, and Chinese voters overwhelmingly approved them.

In addition to Chinese voters, the mayor can count on strong support from homeowners, the tech community and unions. Political consultants say that easily gets him over 50 percent.

Tech money: Individual donors to political candidates in San Francisco can give just $500 apiece. But there’s another way to support candidates: the loathed-and-feared independent expenditure committee.

Lee enjoys major support from the tech community, including angel investor and multimillionaire Ron Conway, who critics say carries way too much sway at City Hall. Conway has funded numerous independent expenditure committees, including one that helped defeat Supervisor David Campos in his Assembly bid against tech darling David Chiu.

Billionaire venture capitalist Sean Parker , who founded Napster and was Facebook’s first president, gave $100,000 to support Lee in 2011 and said he’ll support him again. Other tech luminaries are also expected to spend big to re-elect Lee.

Economic boom: Lee took office during the end of the recession and vowed his focus would be “jobs, jobs, jobs.” That worked so well, the city’s unemployment rate is now a miniscule 4.3 percent. The city’s coffers are once against full (the annual budget is a whopping $8.6 billion), and services are no longer being cut.

Of course, with the rapid economic turnaround has come more evictions, sky-high rents and the fastest-growing income gap in the nation. Several political consultants who have seen recent polls said that voters are starting to show more concern about the city’s direction.

Whitehurst said a poll conducted by his firm, BMWL, in November 2013 found that 54 percent of voters thought the city was going in the right direction, and 30 percent thought it was on the wrong track. A poll from October showed that those numbers were 45 and 33 percent, respectively.

Voters who are concerned about the city’s direction don’t seem to blame Lee, however. Polls conducted in the Campos/Chiu Assembly race found fairly strong support for Lee among Campos backers, even though Campos was stressing income inequality and lack of affordability in his campaign.

Lee’s re-election campaign is already anticipating the affordability questions. Dan Newman, who is running Lee’s re-election bid along with partners Ace Smith and Sean Clegg, said the campaign will let voters know that addressing these challenges is the mayor’s “life’s work.”

“He was an affordable housing and tenants rights advocate long before he entered public service — decades before Twitter first tweeted,” Newman wrote in an e-mail.

Newman said his team expects that challengers to Lee will emerge, and they don’t take a win for granted.

Quintin Mecke, a progressive who ran the failed campaign to pass an antispeculation tax last month, said it’s important that somebody challenges Lee so the city can have a discussion about its future. Mecke was so irked that nobody was challenging Newsom in 2007 that he decided to do it. He lost big, but he’s glad he tried.

“We’re a major metropolitan city, and the idea that there would be an uncontested mayor’s race is a little embarrassing,” he said.

So will he throw his hat in the ring again?

“I’ve taken one for the team,” he said. “Someone else can step up.”

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer and covers City Hall politics. E-mail: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf