The late congressman, state legislator, and organizer John Burton, who died Sunday at 92, was one of those rare politicians who could verbally eviscerate foes in public just as easily as he could cut deals with them behind closed doors. A true San Franciscan, Burton carved out a unique legacy over his six-decade career, one that continues to shape Democratic politics across the city, state, and nation.
The Standard caught up with journalist Andy Furillo — whose biography on Burton, “I Yell Because I Care,” was released just last week — for a conversation about the acerbic yet compassionate politico’s life.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Why was it so important to Burton to help people who were falling through the cracks?
The story that he told many times is where he and his two brothers were walking down Market Street with their father, and they came upon a blind man who was sitting on the sidewalk with a tin cup. And as they passed the guy, John’s father reached in his pocket and dropped a few coins in the guy’s cup.
Somehow that struck John as being interesting, so he asked his dad, “Why did you do that?” And his dad then bent over and very sternly told him, “Don't ever pass a blind man on the street and not put some money in his cup.”
And he followed that advice in his political life — not just for blind people with cups, but poor people, the aged, and disabled whose voices were not being heard in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
Everyone talks about Burton being a fiery speaker and freely cursing — almost like a form of punctuation. Where did that come from, and how did he use it effectively?
“I don't think he even knew where it came from, but I don't think there's any question that it could punctuate the emotion of what he was trying to get across. He wasn't proud of it. In fact, if you look at that tape at the last moment of the Democratic convention [in 2017], he kind of muffled the “Fuck Trump.” He muffled it because, he said, his grandchildren were in the room, and he wanted to maybe soften it a little bit. And then when we did the book, he made me go back and take out dozens of F-bombs.
On Sunday, former San Francisco mayor and longtime Assembly speaker Willie Brown told me he met Burton while they were standing in line to sign up for the ROTC at San Francisco State University. Is there any one story about Burton and Brown that stands out?
The one that solidified Willie’s standing in John's perspective forever was in 1965, Willie and John's first year in the Legislature. A rookie assemblyman named Bill Stanton and Burton were very much opposed to the Vietnam War, and they had written a letter to [French President] Charles de Gaulle, [U.K. Prime Minister] Harold Wilson, and all these European leaders, including a member of [British] Parliament named Konni Zilliacus. They're sending these letters saying that the U.S. involvement in Vietnam was immoral and wrong, and they wanted to get these foreign leaders to join them in opposition.
Burton and Stanton put Willie’s name on the letters without telling him, and then all hell breaks loose once Konni goes public with the letter in London. You've got pro-war conservatives and even Democrats just ripping on Burton, Stanton, and Willie. At that point, Willie had the opportunity to say, “Wait a second, I have nothing to do with this.” He could have really saved himself a lot of political grief, but he didn't. John kind of forced him into his anti-Vietnam War stance, but the way Burton described it is that it just showed what a stand-up guy Willie was. That solidified the two of them forever.
Burton’s drug and alcohol issues became public, and he was forced to step away from the spotlight before returning to politics. Was there a real rock-bottom moment for him?
He had a couple of them. He told me one story about how he was really into nitrous oxide for a while, which is unusual. He was doing it at home alone. I mean, that’s kind of a party drug, something where you get together and you laugh with your friends or whatever. But he was doing it at home alone in D.C. and was just really bottomed out. That's when he called a friend to take him to Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center].
He was in treatment, and that's when he announced that he was not going to run for Congress again. And then he recovered and actually went back to work. It was later, I believe it was 1982, that he really got into smoking crack. There are stories out there about how he would leave cocaine in suit pockets, and when he sent them into the cleaners, he would get down on his hands and knees, digging through the shag carpet for little pieces of crack that had fallen.
It was the crack period that finally got him to go to treatment. And then he goes to treatment in Arizona and finds that a huge part of his problem was alcohol, and he just couldn't be doing alcohol anymore. And then just — boom, he just stopped.
When we hear about the fun-loving times and crazy antics, are there any moments that stand out?
Just the fact that he was like a denizen of North Beach in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when he came back from Europe after serving overseas. When he came back, it was like the San Francisco glory days. The beat movement was really happening. He got to know some of those guys before the hippies got going. And at the same time, he's going to law school, he’s active politically. He would have been, like, 30 years old. He's got girlfriends on the street, he's hanging out playing bar dice with mobsters, working at Bimbo’s, where they're having like, you know, top-line entertainment. He had the phone number to the showgirls’ dressing room, and he could call in there and talk to the showgirls while tending bar and just having a great time.
Burton was an athlete and had a big game against the legendary basketball star Bill Russell, right?
It was December 1953. San Francisco State played USF. Russell was a sophomore at USF, and this was the year before they won two NCAA championships with him and K.C. Jones.
Russell was a sophomore, and Burton scored 20 points in that game. Bill Russell scored 17. USF won very big, of course, and I think a lot of Burton's points came in garbage time. But yeah, he scored 20 points in a game where he was playing against Bill Russell, and he talked about having a shot blocked by Bill Russell. He was very proud of that.