In the history of Stockton’s City Council dating back to 1850, there has never been a candidate like Jason Lee.
Lee’s autobiography tells a rags-to-riches story of a Stockton youth who overcame crushing childhood blows — absentee father, drug-addict mother, senseless death of his beloved brother — to become a reality TV star. He went on to build what he calls a multimillion-dollar entertainment business in Hollywood, making A-list friends.
“I became everything everybody said I couldn’t be,” he writes.
And perhaps some things he shouldn’t be. Sued 17 times by professional photographers and photo agencies who accused him of using copyrighted photos without permission or payment.
Mostly, Lee seems to prefer giving interviews only to the 209 Times, the same crew the civil grand jury says is undermining the democratic process and “misleading the Stockton electorate.”
Lee publicly calls himself “the most transparent of all the candidates,” but he threatened to sue me the first time I sent him questions a year ago. He answered a Stocktonia reporter’s questions through his lawyer. In response to my latest list of questions, Mr. Transparency had his lawyer send a cease-and-desist letter.
The question that rubbed him the wrong way was about an allegation someone else had already made about him on Instagram.
For the record, Lee denied it – through his attorney. Fair enough. But then he took to social media, blasting me for asking, and making claims about me that aren’t true. On his Facebook he calls that protecting his brand. He seems to still see himself as a business and not a public political figure subject to scrutiny.
Part of a journo’s job is filtering rumor and b.s. out. We have to ask. And he should answer. Attack me all you want — that’s OK, I’m fair game — but in years past, all sorts of charlatans and grifters have run for office in Stockton. Digging, asking detailed, often hard, questions, is how we expose them.
Then they get elected half the time anyway.
So instead of the one question Lee punted to an L.A. lawyer, let’s talk about some of the 23 or so other questions I sent to Lee on Oct. 28. He and his legal team have not yet answered.
Questions such as these:
· If enhancing public safety in District 6 is one of your priorities, how do you plan to overcome the hiring and retention obstacles that have thwarted others for a decade? Details, please.
· You launched Healthcare Unlocked, a for-profit corporation, “with the mission to inspire and mobilize one million uninsured individuals to enroll in the Affordable Care Act to usher in a healthier and more equitable future for all.” Is this a national endeavor? How are you compensated for your involvement?
· Your campaign reports expenditures of at least $8,250 to the William & Mary Ann Lehrer Trust of Marana, Arizona, for consulting services. What specific consulting services were provided?
· In the Amazon Prime documentary, “Diddy: Summit to Plummet,” you say, “Anything that Diddy does, I want to be a part of it.” Given the revelations about Diddy, do you want to make a further statement?
(Lee made that statement sometime before Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper mogul, was jailed on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.)
Sorry/not sorry. That comes with running for office.
Lee has yet to answer these or my other questions. It’s a lot like the silence I got from Mariela Ponce in the last column. Whether, like Lee, they lash out with lawyers and falsehoods, or, like Ponce, they just ghost, candidates such as these duck standard questions designed to show the public who they are and what they want.
Still, we should not automatically doubt Lee when he says, “The rest of my life will be committed to changing the world.” Lee says he was helped by celebrity mentors, and his desire to give back is plausible.
I’d like to believe him. It’s just that, after decades of covering Stockton politics, trust is not my forte.
On the other hand, many disadvantaged Stocktonians say they believe Lee will represent them with an understanding of the mean streets and a compassion historically denied to District 6 (though not recently).
Lee’s fundraising has been astonishing. He has raised more than $250,000. Even if a lot of it is his own money, much of it comes from Southern California donors we don’t know. It is probably an all-time record for a Stockton council race.
And so, the central question: Why leave a multimillion-dollar business empire, the glitz of Hollywood, and spend a quarter-million dollars on a Stockton job that pays $29,363 a year?
Elsewhere Lee said he couldn’t find a candidate he could back, so he decided to do it himself. “I got tired of excuses, I came back, found me a house in Weston Ranch, opened my office here, and got to work,” he said at a September candidates’ forum.
Insight into Lee is gained from his self-published 2019 autobiography, “God Must Have Forgotten About Me.”
“Surviving Stockton was a miracle,” he wrote.
Born to a single mom and a father married to someone else, he witnessed his first killing at age seven. His mother became addicted to heroin. Lee had to care for himself and younger sister. When there was no food, he pilfered jewelry from unattended corpses at a local funeral home and sold it on the street.
Misfortunes multiplied. He was molested by a babysitter’s boyfriend. After he interrupted one of his mother’s tricks with a John, he says, she fobbed him off to foster care until he was 14. In his book, Lee writes that as a teen he once tried his hand selling dope in Stockton.
Lee’s Open Sesame to Hollywood, and perhaps the most telling story in his book, involves rapper-singer Queen Latifah. When she played the San Joaquin County Fair, Lee and his sister decided to sneak backstage. Climbing a fence, they were halted by a security guard. “Oh, we had our passes because we’re with the tour,” Lee boldly fibbed. “We’re with the people. But somebody just stole our passes.”
The lie was so convincing the security guard found them backstage passes!
Backstage, they met Latifah. Lee boldly asked for her number. Latifah said no, but added as she departed, “If it’s meant to be, you’ll find me.”
“I resolved to track her down somehow,” Lee writes.
But first he got shot. He was at a carwash with his brother Link when some rando started shooting. A bullet struck Lee in the leg. Doctors stitched him up. Laid up for days, he fibbed his way to Latifah again. Knowing she was on the Fox series “Living Single,” he dialed Fox. “This is Queen Latifah’s cousin. I was just shot … I’m trying to find her. I can’t reach my family.”
Eventually, someone took a message; and Latifah actually called him back, Lee writes. She was displeased at his fabrication, but “I diverted the conversation,” Lee writes. “You told me if it was meant to be, I would find you. I found you, so what’s up?”
Impressed and amused, Latifah invited Lee to visit her on the “Living Single” set when he got well. He did, and Latifah became his lifelong friend and mainstay.
“The first time I came to L.A., I saw Black people working — not killing each other, not selling drugs, but being productive. I fell in love with that world. It was enough for me to decide I wanted to be a part of it all.”
That story — with the dream, the duplicity, and the drive — is a formative part of Lee’s life. But there were other influences.
The most important man in Lee’s life was not his biological father, he writes, but his older brother, Rodney, a 6-foot-5 Louis Park Piru gang member. Rodney cared about Jason as few had. On the eve of Lee’s departure to L.A., at his goodbye party, Rodney was killed by a stray bullet fired by a woman squabbling with someone else. Another of the hammer blows Stockton rained on Lee.
“We were surrounded by so much violence and death that we became numb,” he writes.
In L.A., Lee hung out on the scene, befriending celebrities, partying and searching for his path. It was Latifah, he says, who suggested Lee become another Perez Hilton, a blogger of celebrity gossip and interviews.
Lee built Hollywood Unlocked into “one of the nation’s leading Black-owned media and entertainment brands … with over 3.5 million followers on Instagram with worldwide reach and cultural influence.”
That description is taken from the court papers of Harry Langdon, the latest plaintiff to sue Lee for alleged copyright infringement.
On policy — what he’ll do if elected, and how he’ll do it — Lee has often been vague.
Shortly after announcing his candidacy in November 2023, he was interviewed by Sacramento’s TV channel Fox 40. He said he wanted “to provide opportunities for people.”
“I want to make sure that economic development is a priority,” he said.
But Lee added that he did not yet have any specific policies in mind to increase prosperity or accomplish his other goals because he is focused on winning the election. An old-fashioned editorial board would have pressed him for details if he tried to fake his way past them like that.
Lee’s most interesting idea involves Stockton’s arena. “The city invested $68 million in building an arena that’s empty all the time,” Lee said at the September forum.
In a December 2023 interview with Sacramento CBS TV 13 he said, “I have outside people who would probably want to buy it and increase tourism and bring entertainment back to the city.”
I, too, chafe at the Arena’s dark nights and red ink. It would be interesting to hear how private owners could overcome the market obstacles that have thwarted the world’s largest venue management company, if it’s even possible. If Lee & Co. can, more power to them.
Lee also says his friend and supporter, boxing great Floyd Mayweather, wants to open a Skate Rock City rink in Stockton; and says another friend, comedienne and actress Tiffany Haddish, wants to open a healthy grocery store in the southside. Both would be great. Lee’s close relationships with Mayweather and Haddish give his promises credibility.
Other times, though, Lee shows he may not fully understand how city government works. There was his attempt to secure $2 million for his nebulous youth program without following the correct vetting process. At the September forum he said nobody will invest in Stockton because the council does not get timely data with which to manage city departments and operations. In the Council-Manager form of municipal government, the council only sets policy and goals; the city manager and his staff run the departments.
Lee also said education — together with entertainment and empowerment — is his priority. He called for “educational accountability. “The city needs to partner with somebody who can go after the schools” if they underperform, he said.
But municipal government has no jurisdiction over schools.
Lee has donated to other council candidates. He gave $5,500 to District 2 candidate Mariela Ponce, $5,000 to D4 candidate Mario Enriquez, and $6,500 to mayoral candidate Christina Fugazi.
At the forum, some people asked whether council candidates were in it for personal gain.
Lee says no. “Everything all these people are trying to get I already got, so I don’t need to come here and get it from the city,” Lee said at the forum.
Some trust Lee to bring his talent, resources, and celebrity friends to make District 6 a better place. If elected, he might; or he might bring drama. Maybe Hollywood will green-light a Stockton reality show.
Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com
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