Senator Burton Yields Floor to Term Limits

It was the day after the election and, as always, John Burton, the Democratic leader of the California Senate, didn’t mince words, though his trademark spray of vulgarity was surprisingly absent.

He called the California Chamber of Commerce, which had just successfully pushed an initiative to overturn one of Burton’s signature pieces of legislation, “a bunch of selfish, greedy individuals that are for nothing that helps anybody who’s an average working stiff.”

He expressed bemusement at the postelection victory boasts of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose legislative candidates by and large lost. “There’s nothing better than a guy who believes his own baloney,” Burton said.

After six years as the Legislature’s most powerful lawmaker -- 40 years after his first stint in the Assembly -- Burton steps down as Senate president pro tempore on Tuesday, finally forced back to his San Francisco home by term limits. Sacramento veterans say it is unlikely that another legislative leader will wield as much power or do so as effectively.

“John Burton helped keep alive the New Deal in the new millennium,” said Kevin Starr, state librarian emeritus, a historian of California. “He has to go down as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Senate pro tems in terms of his mastery of parliamentary procedure and his ability to maintain a relationship with not only his own party but with the Republicans as well.”

Burton departs as Sacramento’s most outspoken proponent of liberal activism. Always willing to push the envelope in his tactics, he pressed for stronger child-support laws and to bolster unions of all stripes, to aid California’s weakest citizens -- the homeless, the poor, farmworkers, prisoners and Indians -- and to impose responsibilities on corporations that he believed were more concerned with their bottom lines than with the health and welfare of employees, customers and the environment.

But to the surprise of many, Burton’s Senate reign was appreciated by Republicans, lobbyists, state officials and others for the traditional -- some might even say conservative -- values he exemplified in his daily exertions.

In an age when politicians who avoid being boxed into commitments are admired for their dexterity, Burton, 71, was renowned for taking blunt positions and keeping his word.

At a time when many lawmakers seek to avoid being identified too closely with the political status quo, Burton, a proud partisan, has been willing to defend California’s two-party system by any means necessary, including blatant gerrymandering.

For all his inflexible advocacy for programs for the poor -- “It was the price of doing business with me,” he said -- Burton was pliable on all other matters, even when it meant giving ground, at least for the moment, on such cherished Democratic projects as farmworker rights and affordable college tuition.

“He’s an old-time politician who understands that in a democracy, you’re not supposed to liquidate your opponents, not demonize them, but rather to work with them, because democracy is the politics of compromise,” said Tim Hodson, executive director at the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento.

Though term limits have accentuated politicians’ impatience to garner credit, Burton embraced working behind the scenes, often deploying tactics he had learned in his decades in legislative life. Some of Burton’s most substantial battles took place out of the limelight, as when he silently scotched some of then-Gov. Gray Davis’ proposed regulatory appointees who Burton believed would harm the environment or mistreat prisoners. Burton played critical roles in reaching deals on dozens of pieces of legislation that didn’t bear his name.

Some privately chafed at Burton’s dominance of the Senate, saying that he justified his conceit and willingness to bend rules through his ballyhooed championing of the poor and that he was too much of a micromanager in a chamber where members’ autonomy is paramount.

But Burton won wide praise as the chief promoter of the sober decorum of the Legislature’s upper house. There, Burton’s priorities were punctuality and efficiency and a contempt for anyone who challenged the institution’s prerogatives and powers -- hardly the traits of the rabble-rousing backbencher he was long known as.

“To see him be a moderating influence on a legislative body was something I’d never thought I’d see,” said Dawson Mathis, a Georgia Democrat who served with Burton in Congress in the 1970s, before Burton, deep in drug addiction, resigned. “When he was in Congress, he was sort of a bomb-thrower.”

After quitting Congress in 1982, Burton cleaned himself up in a rehabilitation center and spent nearly six years in private law practice before returning to where he started in elective office, the California Assembly, in 1988. He leaves the Legislature as a man often mentioned in the same sentences as legendary Capitol figures like former Assembly speakers Jesse M. Unruh and Willie Brown.

“I think he’s one of the most remarkable comeback stories in the history of this country,” Mathis said. “To know him when he was in the depths of [all] that he was going through and to see him where he is now, it’s remarkable.”

Yet for all his legislative successes, some say that one of Burton’s unintended legacies might be the Republican governorship of Schwarzenegger, who is enacting an agenda that is the antithesis of Burton’s beliefs.

“A more centrist president of the Senate probably wouldn’t have allowed the overspending, the driver’s licenses for illegals, doubling workers’ comp benefits, SB 2 [mandating that employers provide health insurance],” said Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, the former GOP Senate leader. “When you look at what got Gray [Davis] recalled, none of those things were Davis initiatives.”

Echoing a view held by some Davis advisors but disputed by Burton, Brulte said, “Gray Davis was recalled not because he implemented his vision but because he implemented their vision.”

*

Nothing about John Burton is smooth. Bespectacled, he wears the shaggy gray hair that makes him appear like a slightly befuddled grandfather. His preferred shirt style is the untucked Mexican guayabera that, when adorned with a tie to comply with Senate rules (the sergeant-at-arms kept a stockpile for him) sometimes made Burton look like a rebellious kid reluctantly dressing up for a family occasion.

His sloppy appearance never stopped him from being a fervent flirt around the Capitol, enthusiastically mingling with celebrities in Hollywood and, thanks largely to his law practice back home, accumulating a worth somewhere between $1.3 million and $9.6 million, according to public records.

But he also would buy blankets to hand out to San Francisco’s homeless with no fanfare. (In anticipation of his retirement, Burton has begun building a foundation for homeless children.)

Until he took over the Senate, Burton had been in the shadow of his more profane, mercurial older brother, the late congressman Phil Burton. But the elder Burton, who had guided John into the Assembly and then to Congress, never succeeded in running a legislative body: He lost a 1976 race for House majority leader by one vote.

John Burton employed his brother’s gruff style, with yelling and cursing often the preferred means of communication. But John leavened the Burton harshness with Irish charm and a sharp sense of humor.

“He’s not alive if he’s not fighting,” said Susan Kennedy, who was Cabinet secretary in the Davis administration. “If you’re intimidated by conflict, then you can’t speak John’s language.”

Burton’s behavior was generally ignored as almost background noise.

“It’s part of a persona that people kind of accept because I don’t think there’s a mean bone in that man’s body,” said Tony Beard, the Senate’s chief sergeant-at-arms.

All those nice bones were not always apparent. Consider his response when Beverly Hills City Manager Rod Wood called the Legislature “mental midgets” in complaining about lawmakers’ use of local money to balance the state budget.

“Dear Mr. Wood,” Burton wrote. “I am so sorry that the low income people of Beverly Hills are suffering as a result of the State Legislature’s action. I know how frustrated you must be as you see the homeless and street beggars standing on every corner of your impoverished city.”

He then offered to provide assistance to “you poor little bureaucrat from a poor little income city” to perform an anatomically implausible act upon himself.

Wood said he was not offended. “If you know John, you know it was a relatively mild letter,” he said. “The thing I can say about John is that kind of exchange can occur and you can still sit down with him the next week and make a deal.”

Though two of the three governors he dealt with as leader were Republican -- Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson -- Burton particularly enjoyed tormenting Democrat Davis, whom he viewed as a politician without any conviction beyond staying in office.

When Davis proposed that some Cal Grant scholarships be awarded on merit, Burton tacked on a rider. “He put in the largest expansion of needs-based scholarships in the history of college education, and he tied that to the governor’s little merit scholarship program,” Kennedy said. “The way John drafted the bill the first time, the price tag was so large it practically gave the governor a heart attack.

Today, Davis professes no hard feelings. “Our relationship had its ups and downs, but there’s much that we could look back on with pride,” he said.

In the spirit of satirist Jonathan Swift, Burton enjoyed using outlandish legislation for rhetorical purposes. To protest what he considered Republican political attacks on the poor, he once drafted legislation that would have made it a crime to have an income below the poverty level. Another Burton bill would have required that state orphanages serve gruel.

Burton understood the rhythms of Sacramento to a degree that allowed him to frequently best governors. Richie Ross, a Democratic consultant, recalls watching Burton in a CNN television interview last December, shortly after Schwarzenegger’s inauguration. Burton was asked whether California legislators were “addicted to spending,” as the new governor said they were.

“If being addicted to spending means developmentally disabled kids get taken care of, that senior citizens get eyeglasses and hearing aids and false teeth, that kids graduating from high school have a right to go to institutions of higher education, we may well be addicted to that,” Burton said.

Schwarzenegger ultimately backed down in all three areas Burton listed, starting with programs for developmentally disabled people. Ross said he was impressed that Burton not only could identify the fights he wanted to win but that he could win them in the order he listed them -- seemingly haphazardly -- during that interview.

“That’s this business at its best,” Ross said.

As Senate president pro tem, Burton did not have to resort to threats to get legislation important to him passed. In a recent interview, he described his lobbying last year to get wavering legislators to vote for SB 2, the legislation that would mandate that medium and large employers provide healthcare insurance.

“I just kind of walked up and looked them in the eye and said, ‘I really would like you to vote for this bill. I would really, really like you to vote for this bill.’ ”

Burton said that he would always accept legislators declining “because of a deeply held conviction or it could really [expletive] them in their district.”

“But if it’s based on, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend this interest group,’ well, then it’s kind of a choice, like you want to offend them or you want to offend me? You just take your choice. You’re going to go with Staples or Wal-Mart or the Chamber [of Commerce] or whoever it is? Fine, the next time you want [expletive] something, go get the chamber to get it for you, because you ain’t getting it from me.”

Burton used tough tactics to undermine efforts to reform the Sacramento political culture that he had mastered so well.

In 2000, Burton helped persuade voters to pass Proposition 34, which raised more than tenfold the $250 individual limit on donations to legislative candidates that the voters had established four years earlier.

“Proposition 34 was designed to kill reform,” said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles nonpartisan group. “It was a fig leaf, fooling voters into voting for something. He didn’t allow the opponents to testify on the bill, he didn’t let the opponents write the ballot arguments against the bill and he didn’t let the opponents be listed in the ballot pamphlet so that voters could know that the League of Women Voters and Common Cause were against it.”

Burton this year scotched an effort to place strict limits on how lobbyists interact with lawmakers. When the bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Dario Frommer (D-Los Angeles), went into the Senate Rules Committee -- which Burton heads -- in August, nearly all of its text was eviscerated, ostensibly on behalf of the author.

Who proposed the changes was important because only an amendment from a bill’s author does not require a committee hearing before adoption. But Frommer said he never requested the changes, which he complained rendered his bill worthless.

“I write to express my deep disappointment in your action to gut and amend my AB 1785 without my knowledge or permission,” Frommer, the Assembly Democratic majority leader, wrote to Burton. “We have been friends for a long time, but I must confess I am dumbfounded by your action.”

Burton was unmoved. “What the [expletive] does Dario Frommer know about [expletive] Senate rules? Last I heard he was in the Assembly.”

He then volunteered, “In theory, you know, [we] probably could have had a hearing in Rules.

“Anyway, it’s a [expletive] rule. Violate the Senate rules? What are the Senate rules?” He paused, and then with an intentionally exaggerated grandiosity and a laugh, said: “I am the Senate rules.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Profile

John L. Burton

Born: Dec. 15, 1932, Cincinnati

Hometown: San Francisco

Education: Undergraduate degree, San Francisco State (1954); law degree, University of San Francisco (1960)

Family: Twice divorced; one daughter, Kimiko

Career highlights:

1954--56: Served in U.S. Army; stationed in Austria

1961--62: Served as deputy attorney general

1964: First elected to state Assembly

1974: Elected to Congress

1982: Resigned from Congress; battling cocaine and alcohol addictions

1982--88: Practiced law

1988: Elected again to state Assembly

1996: Elected to state Senate, representing parts of San Francisco and Sonoma County and all of Marin County

1998: Elected Senate president pro tem

2004: Forced by term limits to retire from Senate

Accomplishments: Pushed legislation to increase benefits for the aged, blind and disabled, expand open-meeting laws and require that criminal suspects be convicted before their assets can be seized; as a congressman, established the Point Reyes Wilderness Area; received perfect scores for his voting record from the League of Conservation Voters and the AFL-CIO

Sources: Senate Majority Caucus website; San Jose Mercury News; Times reports