Linking Calif. Sen. Yee's voting record to major donations

As state Sen. Leland Yee aggressively campaigned in the 2011 San Francisco mayor's race, he blasted interim Mayor Ed Lee as beholden to City Hall power brokers with "selfish interests" and vowed to "throw them out" if elected.

At the same time, Yee was allegedly soliciting $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a real estate developer who had already illegally funneled $11,000 to Yee's campaign, telling the agent to "cover your tracks," and boasting that "there's tremendous opportunity in local levels ... because whoever's gonna be the mayor controls everything."

Sifting through the layers of alleged criminality in a years-long FBI probe that ensnared Yee, notorious Chinatown gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow and 24 others last week, the picture that emerges of Yee in a 137-page FBI affidavit is not the sleeves-rolled-up, 65-year-old Democrat with a knack for retail politics that Yee projected.

Chart: A Chronicle review of Sen. Leland Yee's voting record in the state Assembly and Senate.

Instead, it's 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. Now, a Chronicle review of his votes and campaign donations shows that money might have influenced many of his votes in the Legislature, too.

"When you read the (FBI) transcript, it's pay-to-play politics at its worst," said David Lee, a San Francisco State University political science instructor and executive director of the nonpartisan Chinese American Voters Education Committee. "It also speaks to someone who was desperate to hold onto power at any cost."

Gun control advocate

Yee, a gun control advocate and outspoken critic of violent video games, was charged with conspiring to traffic in firearms and six counts of scheming to defraud citizens by allegedly trading political favors for campaign donations to pay off a $70,000 campaign debt from the mayor's race and finance his now-abandoned run for secretary of state.

Controversy has dogged Yee since soon after he was elected to the San Francisco school board in 1988, but how far back his alleged practice of trading political action for money reaches is unclear.

The Chronicle review of his voting record in the Legislature, where he is currently in his 12th year, shows more than 30 instances dating back to 2003 where he cast votes that were arguably counter to his stated positions or the interests of his constituents in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, and then received large campaign contributions from the industries that benefited. Those included chemical, oil and insurance companies, campaign contribution records show.

In May 2003, for example, Yee voted against a bill that would have stopped oil companies from dictating prices in specific geographic regions. The legislation was designed to introduce competition into the wholesale fuel market and drive down gasoline prices in the Bay Area and regions that are the target of "zone pricing."

The bill died in Yee's Assembly Committee on Business and Professions on a 3-4 vote, records show.

For over a year before the vote, Yee's only campaign contribution from oil interests was $250 from a Shell gas station owner. Starting the month after the vote, Yee received $30,000 in campaign contributions over the next six years from oil and gas interests and companies, which had strongly opposed the bill.

On Aug. 26, 2008, Yee voted against a bill in the Senate authored by fellow San Francisco Democrat and then-Assemblyman Mark Leno that would have allowed the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to analyze fire retardants used in furniture, rank them by toxicity and ban the chemicals they deemed to be harmful.

The bill died in the Senate on a 15-19 vote. Chemical companies and their employees donated $22,450 to Yee from March 2003 through February 2010, campaign finance records show.

Such behavior is legal unless there is an agreement the vote is being done in exchange for money or other compensation, said Bob Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.

"If you agree to vote in exchange for the money, that's either bribery or extortion, whichever way it goes," Stern said. "But if you vote one way and someone gives you a campaign contribution because they like the way you vote, that's OK. ... I call campaign contributions legalized bribery."

$500,000 bail

Yee, who is free on $500,000 bail, could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Paul DeMeester, declined to comment on Yee's past votes or campaign funds.

When questioned in 2011 about some of the votes and donations, Yee denied his vote was for sale.

"I've probably taken over 20,000 votes during my tenure at the Capitol," Yee said then. "You have to look at the totality of my voting record. You can't just pick one bill here and one bill there."

But, as recently as September 2013, the affidavit reveals, when an undercover FBI agent posing as someone involved in the medical marijuana business asked Yee how much money he wanted to introduce marijuana legislation, the senator said that "he would have to think about the number."

"Yee described the legislation as a 'heavy lift,' and asked for time to think about it," the document states.

Questions about Yee taking action in exchange for money extend beyond the statehouse.

In January 2004, he endorsed 21st Assembly District candidate John Carcione. Over the next 10 months Carcione's parents donated $9,600 to Yee, campaign finance records show. Carcione's family could not be reached for comment Friday, but in 2004 his father told the San Mateo County Times there was no connection between the endorsement and the donations.

Yee, in conversations with undercover FBI agents that are detailed in the affidavit, was quick to say he was not engaging in "pay-to-play" politics, even though one agent in 2011 told Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board member and consultant doing fundraising work for Yee, that he was not interested in donating more money to Yee if he didn't know what he would get in return.

"Sen. Yee periodically complained to Keith Jackson and others that talk like that is 'pay to play,' and said that he could not do that. He also added that contributions could not be linked to any items, bills, or amendments," according to the court documents.

But, in discussing $20,000 in campaign contributions in the 2011 mayor's race, where individual donations were capped at $500, Yee allegedly told the undercover FBI agent, "we gotta be careful" and "we've gotta get the money, but, you know, to the extent that you could find a way to do it ... you know, I would appreciate that," according to the affidavit.

If Yee won the mayor's race, he allegedly told the agent, "we control ($)6.8 billion man, s-," referring to the city's annual budget. Those comments, the affidavit states, were made during a meeting at a coffee shop in the Marriott Marquis hotel less than a month before the election.

Yee - referred to at times as "Uncle Leland" - and Jackson continued to deal with another undercover agent, "and never walked away from quid pro quo requests," according to the document.

FBI scenarios

In scenarios crafted by the FBI, Yee allegedly lobbied a manager at the state Department of Public Health in exchange for a $10,000 payment. For $21,000, the FBI said, the senator agreed to arrange meetings with two other senators. And for $6,800, Yee honored the Chinese brotherhood organization that Chow had allegedly turned into a criminal enterprise, Ghee Kung Tong, with an official proclamation.

During a meeting last year with an undercover FBI agent about setting up an international arms deal, "Yee attributed his long career in public office to being careful and cautious," according to the affidavit.

"There is rich irony in the fact that Leland Yee spent the last six weeks of the mayor's campaign accusing Ed Lee of corruption when, in fact, the real stench was coming from Leland Yee," said Nathan Ballard, a Democratic strategist allied with Lee.

Yee, an early front-runner in the mayor's race before Lee went back on his promise not to run, ended up finishing fifth. Lee won.

"Quite clearly," said Ballard, "we dodged a bullet."

John Coté is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jcote@sfchronicle.com