- “His ability, his continuing picking up where his brother left off with being a voice for the voiceless, making sure that the blind, the aged and the disabled were taken care of.” – Andy Furillo
John Burton, the irascible and influential California political leader whose half-century career left an indelible mark on the state’s progressive politics, died this past weekend at the age of 92. His passing came just days after the release of his autobiography, written with veteran journalist Andy Furillo, offering Burton one last word in his own unmistakable voice.
The book, which Furillo described as “a first-person memoir,” captures Burton’s raw style, his personal struggles, and his political triumphs. “It came out the fourth,” Furillo said of the release date.
Furillo said Burton had suffered a fall just weeks before his death.
“He had had a fall maybe three weeks ago, but in the four years that I’ve known him, he’s had multiple falls and came back from every one,” Furillo said. “I really didn’t think he would come back from it, but he did.”
The autobiography was inspired in part by John Jacobs’ classic biography of Burton’s brother, Phillip.
“John, when he was getting up there, I think what he had envisioned was something that would be kind of an addendum to that or a follow up to that,” Furillo said.
When the opportunity arose, Furillo took it, knowing Burton by reputation since he was a teenager reading the Los Angeles Times.
“I had always known the legend,” Furillo said. “I thought that book was the best. And so just the chance to meet John Burton I thought was going to be great.”
Furillo insisted the book had to be in Burton’s own voice. “Just based on the fact that he was such a colorful guy and interesting person, a first-person memoir would be the way to go for him. And he went along with the idea.”
The memoir doesn’t flinch from Burton’s personal struggles, particularly with addiction. “He was a drinker from the time he was a teenager,” Furillo said. “He smoked pot when he was in college, and I don’t know how the hell he got into Whippets, but he got into Whippets at some point, but that would’ve been after he got into cocaine.”
Burton himself described his first encounter with cocaine: “Somebody walked into a party and somebody held a spoon under his nose and he took a whiff and then he was off to the races.”
The spiral nearly killed him.
“He felt like he was pretty close to die and blew through a hundred thousand dollars or more on dope,” Furillo said. Burton decided that “if he did not get a handle on his substance abuse, he would either die or wind up in a mental hospital or jail.”
Burton’s recovery was abrupt and permanent.
“He knew that he would never drink again and left treatment and never really got involved in AA,” Furillo said. “Sure enough, he went 43, the next 43 years of his life, he was sober. Just willpower, just really, really strong willpower got him through.”
Still, Burton respected the recovery process and helped others.
“He was very big on the 12-step. He helped a lot of people who had substance abuse problems and helped them. Many of them were people who worked around him or close to him,” Furillo said.
The book also explores Burton’s unconventional path in politics.
As Furillo explained, Burton considered himself an “accidental politician.” “His whole career was one serendipitous occurrence after another, and he called himself an accidental politician, and all of his success was an accident.”
Burton’s legacy, Furillo said, was rooted in his relentless drive to represent the marginalized.
“His ability, his continuing picking up where his brother left off with being a voice for the voiceless, making sure that the blind, the aged and the disabled were taken care of. His ability to work with the other side, just getting, he wanted the title of this book to be ‘He Got Shit Done.’ And he got a lot of shit done.”
That blunt title never made it to the cover, but it captures the essence of Burton’s political reputation.
The memoir recounts Burton’s colorful pre-political life as well. Furillo said he was fascinated by Burton’s upbringing in San Francisco, his time as a bartender, and even his athletic past. “He was a basketball player who scored 20 points in a game against Bill Russell,” Furillo said. “That was pretty amazing.”
As a bartender in North Beach, Burton cultivated lifelong friendships, mingling with both working-class regulars and celebrity clientele. “His whole life as a bartender and the friendships and relationships you formed among the street people in North Beach was really interesting,” Furillo said. “He met people, celebrity types, as a bartender at Bimbo’s, that you meet, friendships that lasted a lifetime there.”
The autobiography also chronicles Burton’s unexpected rise to leadership within the Legislature. By 1970, along with Willie Brown and Leo McCarthy, Burton helped lead Assembly Democrats after Jesse Unruh stepped aside. Later, Burton would serve as Senate president pro tem. He never ceased to be amazed by his success. “He always talked about, at least with me, just how his whole career was one serendipitous occurrence after another,” Furillo said.
Nancy Pelosi, in her foreword, framed Burton as a political giant.
“John Burton always tells us, ‘I yell because I care,’” Pelosi wrote. “Indeed, John is a force of nature—a swirling hurricane brimming with battle-tested brilliance, policy knowledge and political savvy, energy and exuberance, passion and impatience, and often very colorful language.”
She credited him with shaping California’s Democratic foundation.
“Under his two tours of duty as chairman of the California Democratic Party, he led in establishing a firm political foundation that has enabled us to own the ground, get out the vote, and build power for the people,” Pelosi wrote.
For Furillo, the process of writing the book was a lesson in Burton’s contradictions—his toughness and his compassion, his volatility and his generosity.
“People may have been scared of him, but they also knew he was in the fight for the right reasons,” Furillo said. “That’s why even when he yelled, they listened.”
Asked what surprised him most, Furillo pointed to the personal revelations, not the political.
“The number one thing that I thought was the greatest thing was the fact that he scored the 20 points in a basketball game against Bill Russell,” Furillo said.
Burton’s passing leaves behind an unmatched record of legislative achievement and personal advocacy, from early special education programs to criminal justice reform to his later work with foster youth through John Burton Advocates for Youth. His autobiography, blunt and unsparing, now serves as his final testimony.
“It’s sad that he’s not here to keep talking about it, to do the book signings and the stories he would have told,” Furillo said. “But I think he would be glad that it’s out there, that people can hear his story in his own words.”
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