Burton Revisited : Ex-S.F. Congressman Hopes to Retake His Old Assembly Seat

On placards and buttons, the name that dominated this city’s politics for more than two decades is back.

With signs that read, “Burton Democrat,” John Burton, the flamboyant and eccentric liberal former congressman and younger brother of the late Rep. Phillip Burton, is making a comeback, running in Tuesday’s special election for the Assembly seat that launched him on his career 24 years ago.

At 55, he’s off the cocaine and alcohol that prompted him to leave Congress in 1983. Encouraged by an old friend, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Burton jumped into the race and became the front-runner over seven others, ranging from little-knowns to perennials, for the seat that opened last year when Art Agnos was elected mayor.

But while pundits and political operatives believe Burton will win in the heavily Democratic district, he may not get a clear majority of the vote and would face a June runoff against whoever wins the Republican nomination.

If he fails to win outright Tuesday, one reason will be Democrat Roberta Achtenberg, 37, a lesbian. The directing attorney for the Lesbian Rights Project, she seems to have galvanized gay voters who are increasingly frustrated that despite their sizable numbers, the Democratic leadership here has yet to back a gay candidate for anything other than local office.

It’s somewhat ironic that Burton, with his strong record of support for gay rights, would be the target of such a campaign. Even Achtenberg said she voted for him in the past. But, she added, “it’s a new day.” And in this day, gays here are increasingly willing to challenge the Democratic leadership by running one of their own.

In the process, some of Burton’s new-found political foes have derided him as being part of the old guard, one who had his chance and now wants back in because he is bored.

“I got in this because I felt like doing it. It shouldn’t be any mystery. . . . People can have a career change, or a change of mind,” the salty-tongued politician said.

He spent his time out of office as a lawyer and lobbyist, mainly for moneyed clients. But while he will keep his law practice active, he found that doing it full time was “not as exciting as legislating.”

Old Time Campaigner

So like the old-time pol that he is, Burton strode up 24th Street in the center of the Mission District barrio last Saturday, shaking hands and patting kids while a mariachi band played and volunteers passed out buttons. He bolted from his coterie and headed to a barber shop that had been there for decades.

“Sandy, how ya doing,” he said, interrupting a flat-top in the making. He exchanged niceties and news about mutual friends, then barber Sandy Sansoe, as he had done before, taped a Burton sign to his window.

“He cleaned himself up. Why not?” Sansoe said, vowing to cast his vote for Burton. “Hell, I haven’t been too far from there myself.”

The heavily Latino Mission District has been Burton turf since 1956 when Phillip Burton, one of the most powerful politicians ever produced here, won his first election to the Assembly. When Phillip went to Congress in 1964, John took the seat and followed his brother to Congress a decade later.

‘My Neighborhood’

While Burton walked in the Mission District, Achtenberg was farther up 24th Street in Noe Valley, a boutiquey San Francisco neighborhood favored by urban professionals.

“This is my neighborhood,” she said, as young men and women stopped by her table to talk of their concerns--mass transit, the environment, rent control, education, AIDS and affordable space for artists.

In her first campaign, she seems to have the support of many gay voters who make up as much as 20% of the heavily Democratic district. She has raised $177,000 and expects to spend $250,000, half of what Burton will raise.

She has not been shy about attacking Burton’s record. Although she does not mention Burton’s drug abuse, she does cite his absences from Congress and says he missed 1,000 votes while there.

“John didn’t do his job,” she said. “He was invested with the public trust; he squandered the public trust.”

Both Have Liberal Views

Her views are as down-the-line liberal as Burton’s. Although she and Burton might cast similar votes, she said, she would fight harder on issues of import to gays, among them getting money for AIDS research. She also believes homosexuals have no choice but to buck the leadership if they hope to win anything other than local office.

“They take your money, they take your votes and they compromise on your issues when it suits them,” she said. “If you ever hold their feet to the fire, they berate you.”

Still, Burton is tough to beat. Supervisor Harry Britt, San Francisco’s highest ranking gay official and an Achtenberg endorser, called it a “very ambitious thing indeed to take on someone named Burton in that district.”

Britt might have been a candidate for the seat. But he lost a costly battle to Nancy Pelosi last year for the congressional seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Sala Burton, who replaced her husband, Phillip, after his death in 1983.

“We think we have earned our place in that establishment, but we will have to continue fighting for that,” Britt said.

Called Gay Rights Pioneer

Assembly Speaker Brown scoffed at claims that gays have been frozen out. He called Burton, who co-authored a Brown bill in 1969 to legalize homosexuality, “a pioneer (in gay rights) before people wore their sexual preference with dignity.”

Brown has pumped up Burton’s campaign with at least $25,000, while other Democratic Assembly members have given thousands more. A group of Westside Los Angeles Democrats led by Reps. Howard L. Berman and Henry A. Waxman has donated at least $17,000.

“He will have clout from the day he arrives,” Brown said, calling him a “very needed ally,” particularly with Brown facing continued challenges to his speakership from dissident Democrats in the so-called “Gang of Five.” The Brown-Burton friendship dates back to their days at San Francisco State in the early 1950s and continued in the Legislature in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Burton coalition’s hold on San Francisco politics hit its zenith in the middle 1970s when both Burtons were in Congress and a boyhood friend, George Moscone, was mayor.

But the high point was short-lived. In 1978, Moscone was assassinated. Within days, Rep. Leo Ryan of San Mateo, another friend of John Burton’s, was murdered in the Jonestown massacre.

Drug, Alcohol Problem

As a result, politics lost its allure for John Burton, and in 1982 he quit, saying Congress was no longer fun. More than that, he needed to kick his drug and alcohol problem.

Burton’s campaign manager, Richie Ross, explained his candidate’s re-entry this way: He left Congress in something less than a blaze of glory. Now, he wants to “rewrite the last chapter.”

“One thing I hope is that I’ve got a better balance in my life,” Burton said of his comeback. He no longer will feel as if “I’ve always got to be on the treadmill.”

But if his style changes, his politics have not. An early opponent of the Vietnam War, he won his congressional seat in 1974 on a platform calling for President Nixon’s impeachment. Now he sees a need for the government to “start pouring money” into research on acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Over the years, he gained a reputation for eccentricity and humor--talking in pig Latin at a committee hearing or suggesting that President Reagan go to a butcher store to buy a heart.

Hard-Line View on Drugs

Today, he holds fast to the Burton pro-labor, pro-environment philosophy, one of help for the elderly and opposition to more water exports to Southern California. One difference is a “more hard-line” view of drug abuse. He also laces his talk with I-don’t-cares about topics other politicos might see as their lifeblood.

“I don’t care,” he said, for example, of the prospect that he will once again be fodder for press criticism. “It isn’t like I’ve got a future and a career in politics to be concerned about.”

But on his walk in the Mission District, there was a spark. A local, Jose Santana, 75, father of rock ‘n’ roll guitarist Carlos Santana, borrowed a violin and played with the mariachis for a few blocks while Burton dropped into the bars and lunch counters, and old-timers pledged him their votes.

“I’m wondering,” he said, referring to Achtenberg after one such pledge, “if that grass-roots candidate could do this.”