Burton to Leave Mark on Assembly

On the floor of the California Assembly--where conduct runs from informal to rowdy amid fourscore voices slicing and dicing in partisan disunity--volcanic John Burton fits right in.

Erupting recently against proposed Republican cuts affecting the poor, the old-time San Francisco liberal presented his own patented production of an Assembly defining moment.

Leaving his seat, flinging aside his microphone, the 63-year-old Burton strode across the chamber aisle and got directly in the face of conservative Republican freshman Tom Woods of Shasta. Railing with the zeal of the reformed alcohol and cocaine addict that he is, Burton held onlookers rapt, venting heatedly while fixing Woods with a trademark bushy-browed glare.

To Woods’ contention that addictions and diseases are unrelated, Burton demanded, “What about the addiction of nicotine? I suppose that doesn’t cause cancer and emphysema.”

A stone-faced Woods held his ground. Burton walked away, muttering an oath suggesting new placement of Woods’ head.

Classic Burton rant, perfect Assembly theater--but not for much longer.

Democrat Burton departs the Assembly this year, forced out by term limits, as are 24 other Assembly members. As the front-runner in a state Senate race, he could remain a force in state politics.

But in the Assembly, where a Republican majority is consolidating its first year in power, the loss of Burton will leave the lower house without its most fiery, labor-backed populist.

The Assembly, as one Republican remarked, “will never the be same.”

And not just because of Burton’s partisan bombast. Both allies and some Republicans acknowledge a multi-sided John Burton: the excitable, profane lefty, ripping the conservative agenda one moment, but a calculating pragmatist the next. Burton said he makes it a point never to get too personal in debate, “because I may need the guy tomorrow.”

It’s a flexibility learned over many seasons in public life. First elected to the Assembly in 1964, he served 10 years, then was elected to Congress--his path made smooth by the maneuvering of his older brother, powerhouse Democratic Rep. Phillip Burton of San Francisco, who died in 1983.

John Burton resigned his congressional seat in 1982, entered rehabilitation to fight off his drug and alcohol habits that friends had feared would kill him, and six years later returned to the Assembly under his own steam.

Back in Sacramento as a changed man, twice divorced and doting on a grown daughter, Burton is now given to sunbathing, racquetball and abstract painting, along with old interests like reading pop novels, going to movies and collecting jazz recordings from the 1950s.

“We drink from dry glasses, no need for wine or champagne,” he crooned during an interview in tribute to jazz singer Chris Connor and, seemingly, to his reformed but still freewheeling ways. In his outer office, filling a wicker basket, is an offering of condoms bearing the label, “Love carefully.”

Garrulous, seasoned in his craft, Burton has a style that pays off in the GOP-ascendant Assembly, a view shared by some of the Assembly’s most crusty right-wingers.

Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), who tried to get Sen. Tom Hayden expelled from the Legislature as a traitor for his anti-Vietnam War activities, nevertheless calls pacifist Burton a friend who “shows me a lot of class. He’s sometimes easier to work with than members of my own party.”

Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), although he finds Burton’s floor antics “out of line” at times, said the volatile Democrat also has a “knowledge of how to get things done. . . . That’s what you lose with term limits. . . . John Burton stays a friend, and that’s something that is very rare here.”

Burton gets this and other GOP kudos despite being no fan of Republican measures that would eliminate the eight-hour day for nonunion workers, grant tax reductions to corporations and cut welfare.

“Basically, it’s [expletive] the poor, the working stiff and even some of the middle class for the benefit of the corporations and the wealthy,” Burton said in an interview. With mocking irony, Burton introduced a short-lived bill last December making it a crime to be poor, explaining he was “just responding to the Republican agenda.”

Burton lists among his accomplishments in Congress the passage of measures setting up a wilderness area within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area created by his brother, restricting offshore oil drilling, creating a marine sanctuary off San Francisco and prohibiting the CIA from assassinating foreign leaders or secretly funding foreign elections.

As an assemblyman, Burton pushed laws requiring schools to enroll autistic children and to teach basic spelling, establishing a renter tax credit and increasing sentences for purveyors of child pornography. Winning over a key conservative senator, Burton engineered the only veto override of Gov. Ronald Reagan, on a 1974 Burton bill slowing the closure of state mental hospitals.

Assembly Minority Leader Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) attributes Burton’s collaborative skills to his earlier years in Congress and in the Assembly when “you fought and then you dined.” Now, Katz says, Burton still thrives, even though opponents aren’t content just to “kill your bill. They also look to run you down in a crosswalk afterward.”

An example of Burton drawing opposing parties together, Katz said, was his leadership on a 1993 bill that replaced an expired asset forfeiture law with a more restrictive version, requiring conviction before a drug suspect must surrender his property to the state. In order to craft the measure, Katz said, Burton had to juggle interests ranging from conservative Republicans to the ACLU.

This year, Burton says, it’s not surprising that Republicans are pressing measures that Democrats find extreme. “They had a lot of years of pent-up frustration,” he said, while majority Democrats ruled under Burton’s longtime friend and political ally, Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco.

Burton’s view of living through triumphant Republican times: “I’m an old card player. You play with what you’re dealt, and bluff.”

There does appear in Burton a certain lying-in-weeds strategy, as if cooperation with Republicans can’t hurt, in his view, because they are doomed anyway.

Watching a labor rally last week that mustered 12,000 union workers to protest wage policies of Gov. Pete Wilson, Burton looked out at the sea of hard hats, many stamped with the American flag, and told a reporter: “This is important. Those are what we used to call the Reagan Democrats, and Pete Wilson is sending them back where they came from.”

Burton offers no pledges to tone down, either now or later in the staid Senate if he gets there. “I gotta be me,” he said.

Another perceived side of Burton that raises criticism, particularly from his principal Senate race rival, San Francisco County Supervisor Angela Alioto, is Burton’s wealth and “machine” backing heading into the March Democratic primary. The winner is virtually assured of taking the Senate seat in the heavily Democratic district.

Burton’s latest economic interest report amounts to page after page of income, property and investments totaling a minimum of $1.1 million, conceivably running much higher; Alioto says it approaches $7 million.

Burton said he will release his tax returns in coming days.

An admirer in the Senate who once served with him in the Assembly--yet another Republican--said he would welcome a Burton victory.

“John is a throwback to an earlier era where your word meant something,” said the GOP senator, who spoke on condition that he not be identified. “We can use more of that around here.”

Democrat Hayden, the Senate’s maverick titleholder of the moment, added that Burton would “give greater energy to the [Senate’s] progressive wing of the Democratic Party.”

As for proper comportment, “however John wants to behave is all right with me,” said Hayden. “Maybe he’ll be the one to break the ban on not wearing a tie in the Senate.”