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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 88 (Thursday, May 25, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1131-E1133]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                        JOHN BURTON: SUI GENERIS

                                 ______

                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 25, 1995
  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, for those of my colleagues who served with 
John Burton in this House or have known him otherwise, there's no need 
for me to say that John is a one and only. The brother of the late Phil 
Burton, John is now an Assemblyman in the California legislature 
representing the city of San Francisco.
  Sunday, April 9, 1995, the San Francisco Examiner Magazine published 
a feature that catches the essence of the John Burton I know and love. 
John tells it the way it is and he doesn't spare himself. His 
commitment to [[Page E1132]] his constituents, especially those that 
can use a helping hand, comes through loud and clear, as does his love 
for his city.
  Some might ask why, in these days of penny-pinching stewardship, I 
devote limited resources to spreading the John Burton story over a few 
lines of this Record. Anyone with an ounce of compassion will know 
after reading what follows. Serving the public involves more than a 
green eye shade and a sharp pencil. John Burton has that extra 
ingredient. Maybe by putting these words before my colleagues some of 
what John Burton has will rub off. I hope so.
   [From the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, Sunday, April 9, 1995]

                            The Last Tangle

                          (By Edvins Beitiks)

       Caught up in the memory of Jimmy Durante's how's-by-you 
     scene from The Man Who Came to Dinner, Assemblyman John 
     Burton swung around in his chair, imaginary fedora tipped 
     back on his head, imaginary nose groaning under the weight of 
     a Hollywood gone by, ran his fingers across an invisible 
     piano on the desktop in his office and sang, ``Didju ever 
     have the feeling that you wanted to go and still have the 
     feeling that you wanted to stay. . .''
       Burton laughed. ``Saw Durante in Vegas once,'' he said. 
     ``What a show. I goddamn tingled.''
       There are other names that get Burton smiling: Burl Ives, 
     doing his version of ``Big Rock Candy Mountain.'' Louis Prima 
     and Keely Smith. Phil Harris and ``That's What I Like About 
     the South.'' June Christy singing ``Something Cool.''
       Burton remembered listening to Christy on the hi-fi in the 
     mid-'50s, when he pulled a tour with the 2nd Armored in 
     Germany. ```Midnight Sun' `I'll Take Romance,''' he said. 
     ``That got me through the Army.''
       When California's term limit kicks in on the veteran 
     Democrat, forcing him to leave office in 1996, he'll be going 
     back to Ives, Harris and Christy for some soothing words. Not 
     that he needs to be soothed--politics these days isn't what 
     it used to be, said Burton, and leaving the Assembly won't be 
     that hard.
       ``It's tougher to do the public's business, every day,'' he 
     said. ``You're fighting a battle against people who want to 
     cut off a whole hand. I've never been one to take any 
     satisfaction in being able to say, `We saved two fingers.' 
     I've never been happy with saying, `Well, we got them to cut 
     only $10 instead of $20 from the old people's pension.' 
     That's no thrill for me.''
       These are miserly times, said Burton, who publicly 
     underlined his disgust by introducing legislation at the end 
     of last year to ``criminalize'' poverty. His Swiftian bill, 
     AB44, suggested that if a family of four ``intentionally or 
     maliciously'' falls below the federal poverty guideline of 
     $14,763, the parents should go to jail.
       Republicans brushed the bill off as another piece of 
     windmill-tilting by Burton, but the longtime liberal said he 
     just wanted some honest debate on the issue. At the time, he 
     explained: ``Maybe during the hearings it might come out that 
     . . . you can't make it a crime for someone to be poor 
     because a lot of people don't want to be poor.''
       Sitting behind the desk at his Sacramento office, Burton 
     said, ``It was something I felt like doing. The idea is to 
     let somebody have a reasonable chance at a decent job and a 
     good standard of living. You know, people don't want to be 
     poor. They don't want to live that way.
       ``I'm very pessimistic at the way things are going,'' he 
     said. ``Your basic Republican comes goddamn near to being an 
     anarchist. They accuse the Democratic party of steamrolling, 
     but they did something Democrats haven't done--threatening 
     their moderates that if they don't go along with this b.s. 
     they won't get committee chairs, they won't get anything.''
       Republicans have also pushed for a constitutional amendment 
     on a balanced budget--a concept Burton has always opposed. 
     ``It's government by minority,'' he said. ``Businesses are 
     allowed to go into debt, individuals are allowed to go into 
     debt, individuals are allowed to go into debt to buy a home 
     or a car. But to say the entity responsible for providing for 
     the common defense and promoting the general welfare . . . 
     isn't allowed to go into debt? That's crazy.''
       After 30 years of political give and take, said the 62-
     year-old Burton, ``The thing I miss most is . . . your word 
     is your bond. A guy gave you a handshake and that was it. No 
     more.''
       Although he didn't see eye to eye with former governor 
     George Deukmejian, Burton acknowledged that ``Duke at least 
     stood up for what he said. And Ronald Reagan, for all his 
     faults, was much more human than Pete Wilson.''
       Burton dismissed the current governor as ``this p-- --. 
     He's not reactionary. He's not moderate. He's nothing. He was 
     for affirmative action when it was popular, now he's against 
     it. It was OK to bring in Mexican farmworkers, now he's 
     against immigration. I don't like people like that.''
       He hasn't changed much since his first election to the 
     Assembly in 1964, Burton said, ``except that I'm more 
     tolerant of viewpoints different than mine. I don't consider 
     that members who are conservatives are, on the face of it, 
     fascists, although some right-wingers would put on 
     brownshirts in a minute if they could.''
       Burton learned to distrust conservatives on his daddy's 
     knee. His father, Thomas, was a traveling salesman who 
     decided to go to medical school when he was 36 years old and 
     brought his family west to set up shop in San Francisco--
     making house calls in Hunters Point, not charging patients 
     who couldn't pay.
       ``The guy always had a social conscience,'' said Burton. 
     ``He was always very color-blind. . . . I can remember 
     driving once down Golden Gate with him and we saw these kids 
     playing, 6 to 7 years old, black and white, and he said, 
     `Kids that age don't have a problem, but when they grow up 
     they're told, `You can't play with those people.'''
       Thomas Burton, a native of Indiana, was an early supporter 
     of Franklin Roosevelt and the liberal wing of the Democratic 
     party. ``In 1956, he sent a $1,000 check to Adlai Stevenson, 
     which was a lot of money for anybody, much less our family,'' 
     Burton said.
       Their father's liberal leanings were passed on to his three 
     sons, starting with Phillip Burton. ``He ran the first time 
     in 1954,'' John Burton said of his legendary older brother. 
     ``Challenged an incumbent who died two weeks before the 
     election and the guy still won.
       ``In `56, just after I got out of the army, he went against 
     Tommy Maloney, who'd been in city politics forever. I told my 
     brother, `You're f--------g nuts! If you lost to a dead man, 
     how are you going to beat this guy?' But he did, and when he 
     won it, it was a great tonic for me. The beginning of my 
     political career, really.''
       In 1964, John Burton was elected to the Assembly from the 
     old 20th District, a district so Democratic he couldn't lose.
       ``It was different in Sacramento back then,'' he 
     remembered. ``I was calling the sergeant-at-arms `Sir.' Jesse 
     Unruh was speaker, I voted against him and he started to s--
     ---- on me a little bit. That kind of stuff happened all the 
     time.''
       Unruh, son of a Texas sharecropper who boasted of not 
     wearing socks until he was 12 years old, was of the old 
     school, said Burton. ``People like Unruh and my brother ate, 
     slept and breathed politics. Not many people up here are into 
     it like that anymore.''
       His longtime friend Speaker Willie Brown belongs to the old 
     school, too, and it made Burton grin to see the way Brown 
     out-maneuvered Republicans to win back his spot after the 
     last elections. ``Some Republicans objected to even calling 
     him `co-speaker.' They didn't want to even give him a share, 
     and now he's the speaker. The kind of tickles me.''
       Calling back faces from the past, Burton remembered San 
     Francisco Supervisor Bill Blake, who once arrived late to a 
     restaurant, threw the keys to his car to a man standing at 
     the curb, thinking he was a valet, and came out after dinner 
     to find his car stolen. And then there was Congressman Eddie 
     Patton, who ``used to talk out of the side of his mouth like 
     this,'' Burton said, tossing frogtones out of his lower lip. 
     ``Eddie was a piece of work.''
       The phone rang and Burton talked a little, chuckled a 
     little, then offered the three golden rules for a man getting 
     old: ``Never pass a urinal, never ignore an erection and 
     never trust a fart.'' He leaned back in his chair and smiled, 
     nodding his head to the laughter that came bursting from the 
     other end of the phone.
       Burton turned to talk about his growing-up years, when he 
     lived at the edge of West Portal and the whole city was his 
     playground. ``I went to Jefferson Grammar School, played 
     behind Colonial Creamery on Irving Street. When I was at 
     Lincoln High, we used to go out to McCoppin Park, 24th and 
     Taraval, regular. Drank some beer, played some basketball.
       ``I can remember, as a 12-year-old kid, working at the YMCA 
     on Friday nights, getting out about 9:30 and walking down 
     Leavenworth and up Market. You'd have all these hucksters out 
     on the street, selling trick packs of cards, ducks with their 
     heads dipping in water, and never thought for a minute 
     anything could happen to you.
       ``Sometimes I'd walk all the way out to Sloat Boulevard, 
     rights through the tunnel. If the streetcar came through, you 
     had to step to one side, let it go past. Walk all that way, 
     and never worry.''
       Burton drew other pictures of San Francisco in the air, 
     including the image of John D. Monaghan, bartender at No. 10 
     Sanchez. ``I used to take my daughter there on St. Patrick's 
     Day--John standing behind the bar, answering the phone, `No. 
     10,' kind of rocking back and forth on his feet, talking to 
     everybody, more full of s-- than a Christmas turkey. Oh, man, 
     how could you not love it?''
       But those days are gone, said Burton.
       ``Society's getting worse, therefore the city's getting 
     worse. You had the `homeless' at Third and Howard, a few 
     drunks sleeping at night in Union Square * * * but now 
     `homeless' is a part of our society. Not since the Depression 
     has there been the underclass we have now.''
       Because the government flat gave up on the War on Poverty, 
     said Burton, ``we're reaping a whirlwind of neglect.''
       There has been plenty of speculation about Burton's options 
     after he leaves the Assembly. He waves it away, saying, 
     ``When I get out, there are two things I want to do--learn 
     Italian and play some bocce ball.''
       But he's not getting out anytime soon.
       Last month, he threw his fedora into the ring for state 
     senate--the 3rd District seat [[Page E1133]] belonging to 
     Sen. Milton Marks. Burton's ultimate decision, though, will 
     take into account whether Willie Brown runs for mayor of San 
     Francisco or Marks' seat.
       ``I think it's important for somebody to be doing battle 
     with the right-wing Republicans, who are more and more taking 
     over the Republican party in this state,'' said Burton. ``To 
     thwart their efforts to cripple public education, cripple 
     environmental protection and take away women's right to 
     choose. These are tough times, and you should get in the 
     fight and stay in the fight--not drop out and kind of bitch 
     and moan.''
       Burton's name has been mentioned for The City's mayoral 
     race, but he doesn't see himself running. ``My mother didn't 
     raise me to cut back on libraries or playgrounds or AIDS 
     funding, or go after poor people on the street,'' he said.
       Lately, San Francisco has been ``penny wise and pound 
     foolish,'' added Burton. ``But, to be fair, the city just 
     doesn't have the resources.''
       It doesn't seem that long ago that Burton's best friend, 
     George Moscone, was assassinated at City Hall on Nov. 27, 
     1978. But it's been a long time, and--for Burton--a hard 
     road.
       Moscone was his friend from the day they met in 1946 until 
     the day the mayor was shot to death with Supervisor Harvey 
     Milk, said Burton, who still can't understand the killings.
       ``It was such a f----g nutty thing,'' he said, looking down 
     at his hands. ``I heard some political forces were egging 
     (Dan White) on--`Somebody ought to kill that f----r,' things 
     like that. I don't know.
       ``During that period I was, shall we say, involved in doing 
     drugs, and I started doing more,'' Burton said. ``I don't 
     know if what happened to George was the reason for it, but I 
     guess I used it as a reason. I mean, George was as close to 
     me as my brothers.''
       Burton found himself hooked on ``what they call crack now, 
     called it free-basing back then. I would get so depressed I 
     couldn't move. I'd stop for a couple of days and had to start 
     again, just to get energy.
       ``I got into nitrous oxide, too,'' said Burton. ``I'm a 
     very addictive-compulsive person * * * went on a four-month 
     run once, like you see on TV or in the movies, the guy's OK 
     one day and the next he's in the gutter.
       ``I learned you can't quit for six months and go out and 
     celebrate with a couple of toots or a couple of tokes and 
     quit the next day. The only way to do it is not to do it at 
     all.''
       By the time of Moscone's death, Burton was already known 
     for stream-of-consciousness speeches from the floor of the 
     legislature that made no sense. In ``A Rage for Justice: The 
     Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton,'' a biography due out 
     this fall, Sacramento political columnist John Jacobs writes, 
     ``John Burton was going downhill fast. Rumors surfaced that a 
     dry cleaner found packets of cocaine in his coat pocket * * * 
     friends feared they would find him dead somewhere.''
       Burton got the message himself, calling an end to his brief 
     Congressional career two days before the filing deadline for 
     the 1982 elections. He remembers the date exactly: Sept. 30.
       ``I went back to vote against the balanced budget 
     amendment. That was on Thursday. Sunday, I flew down to a 
     hospital in Arizona and checked myself in. It was easy after 
     I really decided to do it, after I acknowledged half-assed to 
     myself that I've got a problem, instead of, `It's no big 
     deal.'
       ``Haven't had a drink since then,'' he said. ``Not too long 
     ago I was at a party where they had that Australian beer--
     Foster's--I took a little sip and I could feel it going down. 
     I knew I'd be in trouble if I took a good gulp. And 
     nonalcoholic beer? I had some once and the guy says, `Tastes 
     good, huh?' and I said, `Yeah, it does taste good. I better 
     not have anymore.'
       ``I don't miss it,'' Burton said. ``I don't really like 
     being around people who drink. Three drinks and they have a 
     heat on, don't even know what they're saying. Women who take 
     a drink and just get silly.''
       Burton, who has been married twice and remains divorced, 
     smiled and said, ``I'm sure it breaks their hearts, but I 
     just have to pass.''
       In Jacobs' book, one Republican argued it was worth keeping 
     Burton in office because ``at least John Burton stood back in 
     his stupor and didn't do much but vote wrong.''
       But Burton's legislative record has been anything but 
     passive.
       ``At one point, before the Republican governors got ahold 
     of it, our aged, blind and handicapped had a better standard 
     of living than the aged or blind anywhere else in the 
     country,'' said Burton, who sponsored SSI bills for the 
     handicapped. ``And our autistic children's program was the 
     first in the nation.''
       Burton was also proud of his ``asset forfeiture law--
     keeping law enforcement officers from just coming in and 
     grabbing property without cause.''
       But he acknowledges his own political career doesn't 
     compare to the record of his brother, Phillip.
       Some of Burton's best memories come from sharing the 
     spotlight with his brother back in Washington. ``I kept 
     thinking about what Phil and I together were doing to all 
     those conservatives in the Old Guard. Driving them up the 
     wall. I laughed my ass off.
       ``You look at what Phillip's done, it's awesome. There 
     hasn't been a minimum-wage bill since he did it, and he's 
     been dead 10 years. Redwood Park, Golden Gate National Park, 
     miners' lung legislation, and on and on and on. He just 
     brought me along for some of it.''
       And Burton enjoyed the ride, every minute of it. He 
     remembered walking down the steps of the Capitol with his 
     brother, making up words to a song about angry Republicans, 
     then making them angrier with new legislation.
       ``Nowadays, there are so many intrusions into people's 
     rights to live decently,'' said Burton. ``If I did something 
     for the quality of life for people, just helped a little, who 
     gives a s-- whether they erect a statue to you or not?''
       Having his political life wrapped up in the wonder of 
     California has made it all worthwhile, Burton said. 
     ``California's got so much, you know? Like Pat Brown used to 
     say--`When I fly over this great, big beautiful state of 
     ours. . .'''
       Burton, whose desk holds a glass ball that beams, ``God 
     Made the Irish #1'' and a nameplate with shamrocks on either 
     side, reminisced about the power of Irish districts when he 
     first started out, when ``the Mission was Irish, Noe Valley 
     was Irish, the Sunset. Around the Castro it was the 
     Scandinavians, the Excelsior was Italian, Potrero Hill--
     Russians and Slavs, the Richmond was kind of Irish, kind of 
     Russian, there was Manila Town off Kearny, and the Haight was 
     a mixture.
       ``The mix has changed, but it's still a melting pot, and 
     it's wonderful. You can't beat it,'' said Burton, grinning 
     all at once.
       ``San Francisco. You've got to f____ love San Francisco,'' 
     he said. ``I remember once when I went out to eat at a 
     restaurant, must have been down around Westlake, and there's 
     all this fog. I got out there, wound up just walking around 
     the parking lot for 10 minutes, maybe more, taking it all in.
       ``The woman I was with must have thought I was nuts, but 
     being away from San Francisco and coming back to the fog . . 
     . you've got to love it.''
       Burton looked around his office, filled with photos from 
     three decades of political hand-shaking and head-shaking and 
     hand-wringing and loud singing in the front room with people 
     from the Mission and Sunset and Bayview. He smiled to 
     himself, hummed a bit of ``Big Rock Candy Mountain,'' and 
     said once more ``You've got to love it.''
     

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