Burton

SAN FRANCISCO — It is a delicate situation: Democratic Rep. Sala Burton, whose district encompasses 75% of this city, is battling cancer. And various politicians–some of them her friends–are openly lining up support to go after her seat, should it suddenly come open.

Politics are always lively in the city that has produced such powerful operators as Burton’s late husband, Phillip, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy. But the next election in the 5th Congressional District–whenever it comes–promises to be especially intense because it will pit increasingly powerful gay and neighborhood activists against the old Democratic machine built by Phil Burton and Brown.

“This thing is the talk of the town,” said Paul Ambrosino, a young San Francisco political consultant. “There’s really only been one hot race for this seat since Phil Burton won it 20 years ago. So nobody knows precisely what the values of the voters are or how the various voting blocs might respond.”

Sala Burton, 61, underwent surgery for colon cancer in August and recently went back into George Washington University Hospital. She met Saturday with relatives and friends in Washington and announced that she hopes to finish out her term but will not seek reelection in 1988.

“It’s an awful situation,” said Paul Pelosi, whose wife, Nancy, a San Francisco socialite and longtime Democratic activist, is a close friend of Sala Burton and wants to succeed her when she leaves Congress.

“I really believe Sala is going to get better,” Nancy Pelosi said in an interview. “I will seek her seat in 1988 if she does not run.”

Pelosi, former chairwoman of the California Democratic Party, is well-connected to numerous national Democratic figures and has helped many of them raise money. She could expect them to return the favor, and she would also get help from former Rep. John Burton, Sala Burton’s brother-in-law, and from Brown and McCarthy, who have been close to Pelosi for years.

Until recently, that kind of support from the Democratic establishment would have made Pelosi the heavy favorite. But that is no longer the case, according to political consultants familiar with the district.

65% Democratic

With 65% of its voters registered Democratic, the 5th Congressional District has long been a stronghold of liberal, pro-labor forces.

But its working-class character has been altered in recent years by the influx of young, upwardly mobile professionals, or Yuppies. In the 1984 Democratic presidential primary, for example, Yuppie favorite Gary Hart of Colorado stunned the supporters of former Vice President Walter Mondale by winning five of the six national convention delegates.

Gays and neighborhood groups are increasingly active in the district.

What this means, according to consultants in the city, is that an establishment candidate like Pelosi would face a major battle for the 5th District from Harry Britt, a gay activist and champion of renters’ rights who who has served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors since 1979. He has announced that he will run if Burton’s seat becomes open.

“The (Burton) machine expects us to always give them their votes, but this time it’s different,” said Dick Pabich, Britt’s political consultant, who explained that better leadership on the AIDS issue is the major goal of the gay community.

AIDS a ‘Top Priority’

“If Harry won, his top priority in Congress would be AIDS,” Pabich said. “Some members of Congress, like (Los Angeles Democratic Rep. Henry) Waxman have been helpful on this, but there is no one back there really out front in a leadership role on AIDS.”

San Francisco political consultant Clint Reilly said: “The gays feel they have paid their dues, that they’ve come of age. They believe it is their turn, and Britt is their candidate. I would expect money to pour in from gays all over the country if there is a special election for this seat.”

Political consultants say Britt would go into a special election with a significant bloc of gay votes, a bloc that would be magnified in importance if turnout is low, as expected.

Also mentioned as possible candidates for the Burton seat are Supervisors Bill Maher and Carol Ruth Silver, both Democrats.

Even Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who is in the last year of her tenure, has considered running for the seat while she bides her time for a possible statewide candidacy later. Some of her advisers have urged her to run if Burton resigns, even if that comes before the end of Feinstein’s term as mayor. But Deputy Mayor Hadley Rolfe said: “She wants to finish out her last year as mayor; it’s very important to her.”

Should Burton not be able to finish out her term, Gov. George Deukmejian would have to call a special election. It would be preceded by an open primary, meaning that Democrats and Republicans could vote for candidates of either party.

That could be significant, according to Reilly, because if the Republicans do not come up with a credible candidate of their own, one of the Democratic candidates could benefit from a bloc of the Republican votes if they could be motivated to turn out.

Channel 4 viewers were left emotional on Sunday night as Educating Yorkshire headteacher Mr Burton broke down in tears

Educating Yorkshire viewers were left in tears on Sunday evening after witnessing headmaster Mr Burton break down following a harrowing incident.

The devastating scenes played out after a pupil made threats against Mr Burton’s family and vowed to “burn down the school”.

Mr. Burton was subsequently told to return to his office, while the youngster was removed from the premises.

“You never know what kind of day you’re gonna have when you arrive,” the headmaster reflected. “You have your good days and you have your bad.

“Certainly, early in teaching, you go through those weeks or half terms when you think, ‘Oh, my goodness me, is there something easier you can do?”” reports Leeds Live.

He continued, “The minute that you think the job is easy, or you’ve got a really easy day in front of you, something will happen to change that.”

The programme then showed another teacher speaking to the youngster as he led him away from the school grounds, saying, “I can see you’re angry, mate, all right. I just want you to sit, that’s all I’m asking.”

A fellow staff member then informed Mr Burton he must head back to his office because of the menacing words directed at him. They said, “Threats to you, threats to your house, threats to burn the school down.”

Speaking to cameras, Mr Burton said, “The hardest things to deal with are when you feel as if you can’t be the advocate for the child that you want to be, and that’s heartbreaking.”

The headteacher was visibly emotional as he confided in a colleague, “C*** that, isn’t it? You just think of the kids.

“I know he’s going through a lot. his grief… but I have got three little’uns at home. You deal with it, don’t you? But threats to burn my house down.”

Fans took to social media to share their reactions, with one saying, “Nobody should be reduced to tears at work (coming from someone who cries at work most days.”

Another commented, “Comes to something when the headmaster starts crying.”

Viewers were also moved when Year 7 student Ismaeel won Year Rep..

“I’ve never been happier or more invested in someone I’ve never met before,” one viewer gushed.

“The next stop for Ismaael is No. 10,” another tweeted, while a third added with a crying face emoji, “Yes, Ismaeel.”

Another fan shared, “Him getting his fellow candidates an applause. So many people could learn a thing or two about kindness from this kid.

“In flipping tears here. That little boy is an inspiration. Bless him,” one fan enthused.

Educating Yorkshire is available to watch on All4.

SACRAMENTO — John Burton was the unique sort of political leader we need much more of in today’s hate-spewing politics.

First, he dedicated his life to fighting for a cause that earned him only personal satisfaction and absolutely no political gain: the powerless poor, particularly the aged, blind and disabled.

These aren’t folks with any money to donate to political coffers. They’re not members of unions harboring large piles of campaign cash. They don’t volunteer to walk precincts before elections. Many can barely walk. They’re not organized. More likely they live lonely lives. And they never heard of John Burton.

Burton — and only Burton — had these peoples’ backs in Sacramento’s halls of power for many years. And no one has taken his place.

Second, this bleeding-heart San Francisco liberal instinctively liked and befriended many political opposites with whom he developed working relationships to achieve his and their goals. He’d loudly denounce their conservative positions on issues but not them personally — in contrast to today’s ugly, click-driven, opportunistic American politics.

Right-wingers? “I never held that against anybody,” Burton writes in his recently released autobiography, “I Yell Because I Care: The Passion and Politics of John Burton, California’s Liberal Warrior.”

“Like, you never know when you might need a right-winger for something. And when you do, it’s best to give them something in return. And it’s even better when what they want is something you don’t really care about. Sometimes, that’s the way s— gets done in politics.”

When it gets done, which is almost never these days in Congress. Things might get done in Sacramento — for good or bad — because Democrats wield ironclad control over all branches of government, unlike when Burton was a legislator during decades that required bipartisan compromise.

Burton was infamously foul-mouthed and often rude. But colleagues, staffers, lobbyists and reporters rolled their eyes and adjusted. OK, so you couldn’t always quote his exact words in a family newspaper or on TV.

At heart, Burton was a softie and extrovert who genuinely liked people of all political persuasions. And they liked him because he was a straight shooter whose word was golden — the No. 1 asset for most anyone in politics.

Softie? Longtime Burton spokesman David Seback recalls this incident when the lawmaker was Senate president pro tem, the No. 2 most powerful office in the Capitol:

“There was a guy who was pretty severely disabled who would go with difficulty using crutches from office to office delivering copies of these multi-page conspiracy theory laden packets he put together to all 120 legislators. There were some typewritten parts, some handwritten, some xeroxed photos.

“One day John stopped him and said, ‘From now on, you deliver one copy to my office.’ After that, all the legislators got a copy of these packets stamped, ‘Compliments of John Burton.’”

Most Capitol denizens — if they noticed him at all — probably dismissed this packet-carting conspiracy theorist on crutches as a sad kook. But he’s the type who was Burton’s purpose in life to help.

Burton, 92, died Sept. 7 at a hospice facility in San Francisco.

The Times ran an excellent Page 1 obituary on Burton written by former Times staffer Dan Morain. It covered the bases well: A pro-labor lawmaker instrumental in shaping California politics over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, mental health, auto emissions and guns.

Burton was integral to a powerful political organization founded by his older brother, U.S. Rep. Phil Burton, that included two of John’s closest pals: future San Francisco mayors George Moscone and Willie Brown. The organization kick-started the political careers of future U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

John Burton left Congress in 1982 to fight cocaine addiction and remained clean and sober the rest of his life. He was reelected to the Legislature in 1988, ultimately chosen as Senate leader and termed out in 2004. Then he became state Democratic Party chairman for the second time.

When Burton died, I was recovering from an illness and missed out writing about him. That bothered me. So I’m doing it now.

I got to know Burton when he was first elected to the Assembly with Willie Brown in 1964. Both were fast learners about how the Capitol worked and ultimately each was elected leader of his house.

“Sometimes all it takes to succeed in politics is to make sure somebody has a nice view of Capitol Park and an extra secretary,” Burton writes in his autobiography of rounding up enough of Senate votes to become leader.

In the entertaining book, co-written with journalist Andy Furillo, Burton writes extensively about “the neediest of the needy…. My district included a ton of single-room occupancy hotels south of Market Street that were filled with people who cooked off hot plates and had to go down the hall to the bathroom. They survived on their federal and state assistance checks.”

Governors and legislative leaders of both parties routinely ripped off these poor folks’ federal aid increases to help balance the state budget in tough economic times. Or they’d try to until Burton blocked them.

“For some people,” Burton once told me, “it can be the difference between tuna fish and cat food for lunch.”

Without calling up local TV — as most politicians would — Burton bought blankets and drove around San Francisco by himself handing them out to the homeless.

“We were brought up to be that way,” Burton told me. “My old man [a doctor], he’d do house calls in the Fillmore, a Black area, at 2 in the morning. And if the family looked like it didn’t have money, he’d say, ‘Forget it. Go buy the kid a pair of shoes.’”

Thanks to Burton, the state was forced into buying lots of tuna fish lunches for the neediest of the needy.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘We’re not North Korea.’ Newsom signs bills to limit immigration raids at schools and unmask federal agents
The TK: Here’s why the redistricting fight is raging. And why it may be moot
The L.A. Times Special: Don’t hold your breath, but as raids stifle economy, Trump proves case for immigration reform

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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John L. Burton, the proudly liberal and pro-labor lawmaker who shaped California politics and policy over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, auto emissions, guns and foie gras, has died. He was 92.

With his brother, Rep. Phillip Burton, and college buddy, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Burton was integral to the organization that dominated Democratic politics in San Francisco and the state starting in the 1960s.

Burton was elected to the Assembly in 1964 and Congress a decade later. Laid low by cocaine addiction, he did not seek reelection in 1982. But he returned to Sacramento after getting clean and became the Capitol’s most powerful legislator as Senate president pro tem from 1998 until term limits forced him to retire in 2004.

“I think government’s there to help the people who can’t help themselves. And there’s a lot of people that can’t help themselves,” Burton said, describing his view of a politician’s job in an oral history interview by Open California.

Burton’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his family on Sunday.

“He cared a lot,” said Kimiko Burton, his daughter. “He always instilled in me that we fight for the underdog. There are literally millions of people whose lives he helped over the years who have no idea who he is.”

An L.A. Times writer described Brown, always dapper and cool, as a piece of living art. In contrast, Burton was performance art — rumpled, often rude, too fidgety to sit in long policy meetings. Some people sprinkle conversation with profanities. Burton doused his sentences with expletives, usually F-bombs.

John Burton with then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2011.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

He was quick to yell but could also be charming. He bought pies from a fruit stand off Interstate 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento and delivered them as apologies to targets of his rants. An aide once gave him a T-shirt with the phrase: “I yell because I care.”

Unlike most politicians, who dress to the nines, Burton wore ties reluctantly and showed up at meetings with governors wearing guayaberas, rarely with his hair in place. When cameras weren’t around, he drove through San Francisco delivering blankets to homeless people.

One of Burton’s many intensely loyal aides was Angie Tate, whom he hired to be his political fundraiser in 1998 knowing she was pregnant with twins. After she gave birth three months early and tried to return to work, Burton insisted that she take a year off, fully paid. She worked with him for the rest of his days.

In later years, he created John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit group to mentor foster youth and seek policy changes. One such bill extended services for foster youth until age 21, rather than the previous cutoff of 18.

“I don’t think there is a person who has done more for foster kids than John Burton,” said Miles Cooley, a Los Angeles entertainment attorney who was in foster care when he was a child and sits on the board of Burton’s foundation. “He wasn’t speaking truth to power. He was yelling it.”

From his early days in public life, Burton, a lawyer and Army veteran, advocated for greater civil rights, opposed the death penalty, and was an antiwar activist, protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam in October 1963, when the U.S. had fewer than 17,000 troops there.

As state Senate leader four decades later, Burton joined folk singer Joan Baez at a protest of President George W. Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. As California Democratic Party chair from 2009 to 2017, he presided as the party changed its platform to oppose capital punishment.

“John Burton was liberal when it was popular to be liberal and he was liberal when it was not popular. I always admired that,” said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, a Republican who tangled with Burton in the Legislature and later when they chaired their respective political parties.

A party chair’s job is to win elections. That requires money. In 2008, the year before Burton took over the state Democratic Party, the California Republican and Democratic parties raised and spent roughly equal sums. By 2016, his final campaign as chair, the Democrats were outspending the Republicans $36.2 million to $17.7 million.

He promoted a ballot measure in 2010 that allows the Legislature to pass the annual budget by a simple majority rather than the previous two-thirds supermajority, allowing the Democrats to pass a legislative session’s most important measure — the budget — without Republican votes, further marginalizing the GOP in Sacramento.

When Burton stepped down from the California Democratic Party in 2017, Democrats held all statewide offices and had supermajorities in both houses of the 120-seat Legislature.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Treasurer Fiona Ma were among the politicians, most of them women, who joined Burton on the convention stage in 2017 for his farewell as party chair. Former state Sen. Martha Escutia serenaded him with a rendition of “Bésame Mucho.”

“John is the chief architect of the Democrats’ dominance in California,” Pelosi said at the time.

Burton paid tribute to the people who had helped him, saying, “You’re only as good as your staff,” and closed by exhorting party loyalists to raise their middle fingers and give a Burton-like cheer to then-President Trump.

Although Burton was a partisan, his closest friend in the Senate was Ross Johnson of Fullerton, who was Senate Republican leader. Sharing a quirky love of song, the unlikely duet interrupted a Senate floor session with a rendition of “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

They also shared a distrust of authority and collaborated to curb law enforcement’s ability to seize individuals’ assets without a trial. Burton and Johnson shaped campaign finance law with a ballot measure permitting political parties to accept unlimited donations, enhancing parties’ power. As a sweetener for voters, the measure required rapid disclosure of contributions.

John Lowell Burton, born in Cincinnati in 1932, was the youngest of three brothers. After his father completed medical school in Chicago, the family relocated to San Francisco, where Dr. Burton cared for patients whether they could pay or not.

Burton lettered in basketball at San Francisco State College and kept a clipping of a newspaper box score showing he scored 20 points against a University of San Francisco team that included young Bill Russell, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He met Brown at San Francisco State and they became lifelong friends. A bartender in his younger days, Burton was arrested for bookmaking in 1962, but was cleared.

Burton credited his oldest brother, Phillip, with pushing him to enter politics. A dominant political figure, Rep. Phil Burton might have become House speaker if he had not died in 1983 at the age of 56.

The Burton brothers reflected a dichotomy in California politics, rising from the left while Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ascended from the right, against the swirl of the Bay Area’s brand of radical politics. John Burton and Brown won their Assembly seats in 1964, the same year that voters approved a ballot measure backed by the real estate industry giving property owners the right to refuse to sell to people of color. Courts later overturned it.

The Burton-Brown organization spawned a who’s who of leaders, including two San Francisco mayors — George Moscone, who was a high school friend, and Brown, the most powerful Assembly speaker in California history. Burton was a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s father, a state appellate court justice, and watched young Gavin’s high school sports games. Brown gave Newsom his start in politics with an appointment.

Barbara Boxer worked for John Burton during his time in Congress, before succeeding him in 1982 and winning a U.S. Senate seat a decade later. When Boxer retired in 2016, Brown helped promote Boxer’s successor, Kamala Harris.

Pelosi is most consequential of all. Phillip Burton’s widow, Sala Burton, succeeded him in Congress. As she was dying of cancer, Sala Burton told John that she wanted Pelosi to succeed her, and he used all his connections to help Pelosi win the congressional seat in 1987.

Outgoing California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton at the California Democratic State Convention in 2017.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

In November 1978, Burton declined an invitation from Rep. Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Mateo, to accompany him to Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult, once a force in San Francisco politics. On Nov. 18, as Ryan’s plane was about to depart with cult defectors, one of cult leader Jim Jones’ followers assassinated the congressman. Jones led a murder-suicide resulting in more than 900 deaths.

On Nov. 27, 1978, with the city convulsed by the Jonestown cataclysm, Dan White, a former San Francisco supervisor, sneaked into City Hall and assassinated Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

Burton fell hard in the months and years after, drinking heavily, huffing nitrous oxide and freebasing cocaine. He missed congressional votes, and aides feared he would be found dead. In 1982, he checked into a rehab facility in Arizona and did not seek reelection.

Back in San Francisco, he built a law practice, stayed clean and returned to politics, winning a special election for an open Assembly seat in 1988. He reunited with Speaker Brown and became his close ally.

Burton’s eclectic circle of friends included national political figures, Hollywood glitterati, football coach John Madden, North Beach topless dancer Carol Doda and, from his bartending days, Alice Kleupfer, a cocktail waitress.

In this small world, Kleupfer’s son James Rogan won an Assembly seat from the Burbank area as a Republican in 1994, was elected to Congress in 1996, and helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Politics aside, Burton and Rogan shared a connection through Kleupfer.

That friendship mattered on May 30, 1996, when Republicans, holding a short-lived 41-39 seat advantage in the Assembly, rushed to approve tough-on-crime bills. One bill would have made it a crime for pregnant women to abuse drugs, a response to accounts of babies born addicted to cocaine. The GOP-led Assembly seemed certain to pass it when Burton stood to speak.

Though not a commanding orator, Burton spoke from the heart about how cocaine “takes total control of your life,” and how he spent days freebasing in hotel rooms, refusing maid service because he didn’t want anyone to see him.

“It took me, somebody who at least has got a fair set of brains sometimes, who comes from a background that is not deprived, who at the time I was doing it — and I’m not proud to say — was a member of the House of Representatives, and it took me two years to get off this drug, which is the most insidious drug you can imagine,” Burton said.

Floor speeches rarely change minds. But after Burton pleaded with Republicans not to “turn these young women into criminals,” Rogan, then-Speaker Curt Pringle and a few other Republicans withheld their votes. With the bill pending, Republicans conferred behind closed doors and quietly dropped the bill.

“It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t scripted. It was pure John Burton,” said Rogan, who went on to become a Superior Court judge in Orange County. Burton was the only Democrat who had the relationships and gravitas to derail the bill.

For most of his time in office, Burton served under Republican governors. He butted heads with them and on occasion won them over.

When young Assemblyman Burton sought to decriminalize marijuana, Reagan, implying that Burton was a nut, quipped that the San Franciscan was the one man in Sacramento who had the most to fear from the squirrels that populate Capitol Park. Burton answered by calling reporters to the park and trying to feed squirrels a copy of some Reagan-backed legislation.

“There’s some benefit to people thinking you’re nuts,” Burton said in an interview.

Though he was a relatively junior legislator, Burton took a lead role in Reagan’s 1971 welfare overhaul, pushing for annual cost-of-living adjustments for welfare recipients, something he fought to protect over the years.

He disparaged Gov. Pete Wilson, a Marine Corps veteran, for his efforts to limit welfare by calling him “the little Marine.” Burton had a “wicked sense of humor and a “colorful” way of expressing it” but was “a straight shooter,” Wilson said.

“With respect to legislative leaders, as Democrats, I would say that the combination of John Burton and Willie Brown negotiating budget and policy solutions during a time of crisis in the Reagan Cabinet Room was some of the finest policy and political talent California has ever seen,” Wilson said.

Voters elected Burton to the state Senate in 1996, and senators elected him Senate president pro tem in 1998, the year Gray Davis was elected governor, the first Democrat to hold that office after 16 years of Republicans. The relationship was strained.

In appearance, temperament and approach, they were opposites, and they clashed. Davis was a centrist who tried to be tightfisted. Burton, often dismissive of Davis, tried to pull him to the left. When it suited their interests, however, Davis signed legislation that Burton advocated, and Burton carried administration legislation.

“It ain’t brain surgery,” Burton said in 2021 of the art of turning a bill into a law. But few legislators could handle a lawmaking scalpel like Burton.

As Senate leader, he shepherded legislation to buy the last large stands of old-growth redwoods, increase public employee pensions, restrict guns and expand the right to sue, including for victims of sexual harassment. He was the target of such a suit in 2008. It was settled a few months later.

Burton routinely blocked legislation that increased the length of prison sentences but was a favorite of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison guards. He was, after all, pro-labor.

In 2002, Burton carried legislation ratifying the prison officers’ contract negotiated by the Davis administration granting officers a raise of roughly 35% over five years, and boosting their pensions. Later that year the union, run by the fedora-wearing Don Novey, celebrated Burton’s 70th birthday by donating $70,000 to his campaign account.

Often, Burton sought no credit for what he helped others accomplish, as Fran Pavley discovered. In 2001, her first year in the Assembly, Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat, proposed far-reaching climate change legislation to authorize the California Air Resources Board to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes.

Lobbyists for automakers shifted into overdrive, airing ads warning California that AB 1058 would dictate what cars people could own. The oil industry, drive-time talk radio hosts, and even Cal Worthington and his dog Spot piled on. AB 1058 looked like roadkill.

Burton’s solution: Hijack another bill and insert the contents of Pavley’s bill into it. With that bit of legerdemain, AB 1058 died, AB 1493 was born, and the auto industry’s campaign crashed.

Burton didn’t attend the ceremony when Davis signed the bill. Nor did he accompany Pavley a decade later when President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony embracing the California concept in nationwide fuel-efficiency standards.

Pavley said she had never seen a politician work so hard for a bill for no credit, ”and I haven’t seen it since.”

Burton took special interest in certain issues. He was, for example, appalled at the force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers to produce foie gras. In one of his final bills, he battled restaurant owners and agricultural interests to ban the practice. It passed the Senate by one vote.

In a letter urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the bill against the wishes of some chefs, he included Burtonesque doggerel: “Save Donald Duck. F— Wolfgang Puck.”

Schwarzenegger signed the bill and sent Burton a photo of himself and Burton in the governor’s office looking at the bottom of the governor’s shoe with a note: “I got duck liver on my shoe!” In the background of the photo, there’s an image of Reagan, smiling with his head tilted back as if he’s having a good laugh.

Burton, who was divorced twice, is survived by his daughter, attorney Kimiko Burton, and two grandchildren.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

Morain is a former Times staff writer.

SAN FRANCISCO — John Burton walks through North Beach, five cappuccinos under his belt, a swing in his step. It’s a fine sunny morning in the city.

An old buddy lumbers up. “John!” A thump on the back, a hearty embrace. “Congratulations! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!”

Who can?

Shortly before noon today, John Lowell Burton–recovered drug addict, merry prankster of the state Legislature, high-voltage champion of all things liberal–will take the helm of the stuffy California Senate.

The moment is pure personal triumph, the crest of an extraordinary comeback. Sixteen years ago, Burton departed the world of politics and was pronounced washed up. A cocaine abuser, he was one binge away from death.

Now Burton is a clean and sober 65. And, while he still seems more court jester than king, more iconoclast than esteemed leader, here he is, proud owner of what has become the most powerful job in the Legislature.

There are many reasons. Term limits are toppling the current sultan, Hayward Democrat Bill Lockyer, and Burton–a streetwise politician and masterful fund-raiser–seems a savvy choice as heir in an election year that will once again put the Senate’s modest Democratic majority to the test.

But mostly, colleagues say, Burton got to the top on the strength of his word. Although he’s a fiery partisan who will gladly holler and bully to win a point, Burton is also regarded as loyal, fair, straightforward and trustworthy to the core.

“He’s a committed liberal, but his word is his bond,” said the conservative Sen. Ross Johnson of Irvine, one of many Republicans who call the Democratic leader a friend.

Burton is happy to hear such praise, but seems somewhat perplexed by his astonishing climb. “It’s amazing, really,” he muses. “It’s a little bit serendipity. But I guess it also proves you should never underestimate a guy.”

*

John Burton is not for the faint of heart.

Tall, fit and perpetually frowning, he has a fondness for expletives and a demeanor that veers from blunt to volcanic. Last year, his staff summed him up in a personalized T-shirt, which now hangs on his office wall. “I Yell Because I Care,” it says.

Ever restless, the bespectacled Burton roars through life at warp speed. He prefers stairs to elevators and loves to roam the Capitol’s corridors, blowing kisses to women and feeding his coffee habit in the sixth-floor cafeteria. When the Senate is in session, he rarely sits at his desk, opting instead to circulate, to talk.

“My second wife called me Frenetic Freddie,” he says. “I guess it fits.”

Burton is also great company–a wisecracking but tender character in a legislative cast that seems to grow more bland by the year.

He is a walking sports almanac–unrivaled, especially, in his mastery of basketball trivia from the 1940s and ‘50s–and a movie buff extraordinaire.

When the spirit moves him–which it does, often–he recites poetry or bursts into song. He watches so much TV–”More than old people on Thorazine”–that he has carpal tunnel syndrome from working the remote control.

Home is a modest flat atop San Francisco’s eclectic Potrero Hill, a place that is pure bachelor, with plastic plants and five lonely items in the refrigerator–milk, cereal, Saltines, diet soda and coffee. Lots of coffee. His favorite room: the rooftop deck, where he pursues one of his primary hobbies–tanning–when the fog’s not in town.

Photographs of his only child, daughter Kimiko, 33, are scattered about. Divorced twice, Burton says the odds are he won’t marry again.

It’s Friday, an off day in the Legislature, and Burton sits for a haircut and mustache trim near Union Square. His stylist, JoAnn Puccini, clips and shaves and chats, a routine they’ve shared for a decade and a half.

Burton is captive, so it seems a good time to ask what about him has changed since he was first elected to the Legislature 34 years ago. “My hair,” Burton replies. “Grayer. Less of it.”

And his politics?

“No change there,” he says, admitting that he’s among the last of California’s true liberals. “I mean, I don’t get this ‘New Democrat’ s—. There are only so many ways you can feed people, get jobs for the unemployed, give kids a good education.”

Moments later, Burton is blow-dried and back in his Buick, barking into his cellular phone, heading for a luncheon across town. Parking is tight, but the senator cares not. He slides into a red zone, checks his watch: “You gotta know the meter maid schedules,” he says.

Edging into the luncheon, Burton shakes hands and accepts congratulations, his haunted hazel eyes scanning the room. Then he’s corralled by former San Francisco 49er tackle Bob St. Clair, who bends his ear about the new ban on smoking in California bars.

“Gimme a break, John,” St. Clair bellows, red-faced. “No smoking in bars? You gotta get rid of that!”

“Oh yeah? What about the guy who’s tending bar, Bob? You heard of f—— secondhand smoke? You heard of f—— lung cancer?”

Burton doesn’t stay for lunch. Instead, he motors down to the bay for a hot dog at Red’s Java House, a snack bar swirling with construction workers and sea gulls.

“The dogs are decent, the view’s great,” Burton says, washing down his meal with a Diet Coke.

Next stop–another cappuccino, decaf this time, and then racquetball, which he plays with gusto despite a shot to the face that left him nearly blind in one eye.

*

Except for a six-year break after his treatment for drug addiction, Burton has been in office nonstop since 1965. Given the path charted by his big brother, Phillip, the legendary congressman, the career choice was a natural.

“It’s a noble calling; it’s about helping people,” says Burton, a lawyer who estimates his net worth at $600,000 to $1 million. And after you taste politics, everything else seems “kind of a bore.”

The youngest of three boys, Burton was raised in San Francisco’s Sunset district, where he remembers eating “a lot of macaroni and franks and beans.” His father–a doctor and one of the few whites who made house calls in black neighborhoods–passed to his sons a sense of compassion for those less fortunate.

“We were taught about giving,” Burton recalls, “that you put a dime in a blind man’s cup.”

Burton’s mother taught her son something else–the value of work. When she wanted a mink coat and her husband said no, she took a second job and bought it herself.

When he wasn’t chasing rebounds on the basketball court, young John was hustling shoeshines in the city’s Tenderloin district, mixing with “hookers and con men and pimps and thieves.” It was there that he learned the importance of keeping one’s word.

“If you did stuff straight–if you said what you meant and meant what you said–you had a better chance of staying out of trouble,” he recalls. The same goes for politics. “Your word–your trustworthiness–that’s a very strong currency in this business.”

Burton’s first campaign for the Assembly was a cruise–”never in doubt,” he recalls of the 1964 race. He has served two tours in the Legislature, distinguishing himself as an impassioned defender of the poor and disabled, a friend of women, labor, consumers and the environment. He is anti-gun and supports abortion rights. Despite serving two years as an MP in the Army, he was one of the first legislators to openly oppose the Vietnam War.

Burton has played the maverick in other ways as well, refusing in his first year to vote for the powerful Jesse Unruh for Assembly speaker. Unruh won anyway, and punished him with a seat on the Agriculture Committee, where the issues had little relevance to his urban district. Some may have pouted, but Burton used the opportunity to befriend Republicans, a strategy that serves him well to this day.

In 1974, Burton went off to Congress, where he earned a reputation as a gifted lawmaker but a bit of a nut. One day, he’d be all business, leading hearings into aviation safety or establishing a marine sanctuary off the California coast. The next, he’d rage against pay toilets in airports or spout off in Pig Latin during a committee hearing.

More erratic behavior was to come. When Burton’s brother narrowly lost his bid to become House majority leader in 1976, Burton grew disillusioned, feeling that the family had been betrayed by their liberal friends.

Two years later, Burton’s best chum since boyhood–San Francisco Mayor George Moscone–was gunned down by Supervisor Dan White. Nine days after that, Rep. Leo Ryan, another old friend, was shot to death in Guyana while investigating Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones.

Gradually, Burton began missing votes on the House floor, even disappearing for days at a time. A longtime drinker, he sought refuge from his grief in booze and drugs.

Addled by a diet of cocaine, alcohol, tranquilizers, nitrous oxide and whatever else was around, Burton believed one of three things had to happen to spring him from his trap. One, he would die. Two, he’d have a nervous breakdown. Or three, he’d be arrested.

Instead, he ran out of money. “If I’d had another $10,000,” he figures, “I’d probably be dead.”

Burton lived, but his well-publicized addiction had drained his savings and helped sink his second marriage. He said farewell to Congress, checked into an Arizona hospital for intensive treatment and returned home to practice law, declaring himself finished with political life.

Six years later, his old friend and ally Willie Brown invited him back into the game. He mulled it over, mulled some more, then ran for his old Assembly seat. And won, no sweat.

*

Burton is walking through Capitol Park in Sacramento, talking movies, when he suddenly stops by a mob of squirrels eating nuts from a tourist’s hand. “I love squirrels,” he says. “I mean, look at that. That’s great. They’re such social animals.”

It takes one to know one.

In pursuing the Senate leadership job, Burton did what he’s done time and again throughout his life–he campaigned, “went right out and hustled the votes.”

Lining up friends and wooing the wary, Burton turned on the Irish charm. He invited skeptics to lunch. He explained himself, reminded people “that I’m good at what I do, that I ain’t no goddamn kid.”

In the end, he got the nod, beating a cautious, moderate former Roman Catholic seminarian, Sen. Patrick Johnston of Stockton. But he didn’t convert everyone.

Take Sen. Ruben Ayala, for instance, a conservative Democrat from Chino who is just plain uncomfortable with Burton’s profane, blustery style.

“He’s visited my office six times. He is trying real hard,” says Ayala, who has declined to endorse Burton and threatened to resign from the powerful Rules Committee. “If I can work with him, fine, no problem. But judging by his past behavior, I don’t think I can.”

Burton knows he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But while he plans to tone down his confrontational side a bit, and acknowledges that being in charge carries certain behavioral obligations, he won’t promise fundamental change. “I am who I am,” he says. “People knew what they were getting with me.”

So what kind of leader will he be? Will his new post, which Lockyer made the state’s second most powerful political job–right after the governor–remain so?

Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, a former GOP leader of the Assembly, predicts that Burton will abandon his “rebel, bomb-thrower” ways and do a good job.

“[Leadership] has a very maturing effect on you. He is absolutely up to it.”

*

The big day is drawing near, and Burton is talking clothes, a rare topic for someone whose sartorial signature has been wrinkles, athletic shoes and disdain for ties. But he’s about to become the new czar of the Senate, and he’s got to look the part–for today’s ceremony, at least.

And so, Burton is asked, what will it be?

“I think I’ll wear the Zegna,” he says, referring to a pricey Italian number, one of the few suits he owns. “It’s blue. Single-breasted. Double vents.”

And the shirt? “Plum.”

And the shoes? “Black. Lace-ups.”

When Burton takes the oath today, few in the gallery will be prouder than his daughter, Kimiko. She has seen her father surf the heady swells and deep troughs of politics. She knows just what this pinnacle means.

Critics, she says, “never gave him credit as a good legislator,” discounting him as a has-been who had “run out of gas.” This achievement, declares the daughter, is “like a vindication.”

The father wouldn’t disagree:

“Unruh used to say there is no greater honor than being selected by your peers. Well, it’s happened. And you know, it’s really true.”

Indeed, out of respect for the moment, Burton may skip his Thursday racquetball match.

Then again, he may not.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: John L. Burton

A veteran state legislator who also served eight years in Congress, Burton will be elected president pro tem of the California Senate today. The blustery liberal Democrat is known for his wit, political savvy and unlikely friendships with Republicans. He will succeed Sen. Bill Lockyer, who is stepping aside because of term limits.

* Born: Dec. 15, 1932

* Residence: San Francisco

* Education: Undergraduate degree from San Francisco State, where he was an all-league guard on the basketball team; law degree, University of San Francisco

* Career highlights: Pushed legislation to increase benefits for the aged, blind and disabled, expand open meeting laws and require that criminal suspects be convicted before government can seize their assets; led the only successful effort to overturn the veto of a bill by former Gov. Ronald Reagan (which would have closed mental hospitals); in Congress, established the Point Reyes Wilderness Area.

* Interests: Racquetball, movies, sports trivia

* Family: Divorced twice; has an adult daughter, Kimiko

* Quote: “I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”