January 29, 2014

10 Guesses Why SF Mayor Ed Lee Is Sitting With Michelle Obama at SOTU

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/commonwealthclub/6925009778/sizes/z/">Commonwealth Club</a>/Flickr

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First Lady Michelle Obama has invited San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to sit in her box during the State of the Union Speech tonight, but she didn’t specify why. All we know is that she’s continuing a longstanding tradition of inviting “extraordinary Americans who exemplify the themes and ideals laid out in the State of the Union Address,” as the White House puts it.

A former city bureaucrat who was first appointed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to replace Mayor Gavin Newsom before winning re-election, Lee is considered popular and competent but not particularly extraordinary—except for the fact that he’s the…oh, wait, he’s only the second Asian-American mayor of a major US city. (The first was San Jose’s Norm Mineta, who later became Transportation Secretary under George W. Bush.) So why was Lee invited? Was it because he proposed a $15 minimum wage for a city whose $10.55 minimum is already the nation’s highest? Or perhaps because he rallied Silicon Valley around immigration reform?

Here are 10 other possibilities:

  1. Obama is settling for Lee because he couldn’t get Bat Kid.
  2. The president is set to announce a transcontinental Google Bus route.
  3. In the future, $4 toast will be a mandatory minimum benefit in Obamacare plans.
  4. Rose Pak
  5. Maybe he has some techie friends who know how to fix a website.
  6. Exporting your poor and middle-class people to other cities is a great model for fighting income inequality.
  7. The Fear the Moustache meme is still too legit to quit.
  8. The President feels guilty for that time when the Giants won the World Series but Lee couldn’t get into the White House party because his name wasn’t on the list.
  9. Lee is the last Californian the Secret Service would suspect of being a marijuana courier.
  10. If you live in DC but crash on your San Francisco friend’s couch when you’re in town for business, it’s probably a good idea to return the favor once or twice. The same logic applies to political fundraising. See you in Presidio Heights, Ed.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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