Leland Yee

Leland Yin Yee (Chinese: 余胤良; Jyutping: jyu4 jan6 loeng4; pinyin: Yú Yìnliáng; born November 20, 1948) is an American former politician who served as a member of the California State Senate for District 8, which covered parts of San Francisco and the Peninsula.

Prior to becoming state senator, Yee was a California State Assemblyman, Supervisor of San Francisco's Sunset District, and President of the San Francisco School Board. In 2004 Yee became the first Asian American to be appointed Speaker pro Tempore, making him the second highest ranking Democrat of the California State Assembly.

In 2015, Yee pleaded guilty to felony racketeering charges for money laundering, political corruption, arms trafficking, and bribery. Yee was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on March 26, 2014, on charges related to public corruption and gun trafficking—specifically, buying automatic firearms and shoulder-launched missiles from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamist extremist group located in the southern Philippines and attempting to re-sell those weapons to an undercover FBI agent, as well as accepting a $10,000 bribe from an undercover agent in exchange for placing a call to the California Department of Public Health regarding a contract at the organization.

In response to the gun running and other criminal charges against him, the California State Senate suspended Yee as a Senator on March 28, 2014. On July 1, 2015, Yee pleaded guilty to a felony racketeering count in relation to money laundering, public corruption and bribery in a joint-prosecution alongside fellow organized crime figures based in San Francisco's Chinatown. On February 24, 2016, Yee was sentenced to five years in federal prison, and was released on June 26, 2020.

Leland Yee immigrated to San Francisco, California from his birthplace of Taishan, Guangdong, China, when he was three years old and later became a naturalized American citizen. His father served in the United States Army and the United States Merchant Marine.

He received his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree at San Francisco State University before earning his PhD in child psychology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1975.

After obtaining his doctorate, Yee worked as a therapist in the Mental Health Department of San Francisco, the Oakland School District and with Asian American for Community Involvement, a non-profit that serves low-income people.

Yee was elected to the San Francisco Board of Education in 1988 and served two four-year terms on the board including one as board president. During his tenure, Yee called for audits of all schools in the San Francisco Unified School District and fought to establish performance standards for educators.