Former congressman who later managed Pelosi's campaign dead at 92

Jessica Wehrman, CQ-Roll Call on Sep 8, 2025

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Former Rep. John Burton, a frequently foul-mouthed liberal lion from San Francisco who served four full terms in Congress before leaving because of an addiction to nitrous oxide and crack but later became a mentor to many of his state’s most prominent Democrats, died Sunday. He was 92.

Burton won a special election in 1974 to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Rep. William Mailliard. Along with his brother Philip, who also served Congress, and Phillip’s widow, Sala, who succeeded her husband after his death, he was part of a California political dynasty that helped boost the careers of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“There was no greater champion for the poor, the bullied, the disabled, and forgotten Californians than John Burton,” Newsom wrote on X. “His legacy is not only written in the policies he helped enact, but in the countless lives he touched and uplifted, including my own.”

A 1982 CQ Politics in America profile of Burton described him as an eccentric, saying Burton’s speeches on the House floor saw him “liable to do just about anything — complain about pay toilets, exult that no one was killed in a minor grease fire in the House restaurant, or make one-sentence speeches utterly irrelevant to the debate, such as ‘She wore a glove because she had warts.’”

But that same profile reported that during his time on the then-Government Operations Committee, his investigation of safety standards of a 1979 DC-10 crash in Chicago made it clear he was a man “seriously concerned about the quality of the aircraft millions of people were flying in.”

A 1980 Almanac of American Politics profile was more dismissive, saying Burton “spent much of his time in the House as a lieutenant for his brother, helping him to put together support in his narrowly unsuccessful fight to become House Majority Leader.”

He decided not to run for a fifth term in 1982 so he could deal with addictions to crack and nitrous oxide as well as to be treated for depression.

In 1984, ABC’s “Good Morning America” host David Hartman, in an interview with Burton, told viewers that Burton had spent more than $100,000 over a six-year period supporting a cocaine habit.

“I used up all of my savings,” Burton told Hartman. “I spent an inordinate amount of money. In the end, it affected my work to the degree that I didn’t really care about much. It had an effect on my family life, I guess, because during that period my wife and I separated. It’s always a question of whether the dependency led to the separation or rather the problems I had with my family led to my dependency.”

But by 1987, he had recovered enough to manage Pelosi’s first campaign for Congress to fill the seat represented first by Phillip Burton, then by Sala.

He returned to the state legislature, serving in the California State Assembly and then in the state Senate until 2004.

In a statement, Pelosi called Burton a “towering progressive warrior, who for half a century never pulled a punch in his dogged fight for a fairer future for our children.”

“All who knew John knew that behind his profanity-laden language was a profound progressive vision for how to make real the promise of America,” she said. “He dreamed of a city without homelessness or hunger; a society dedicated to full equality, no matter who you are or who you love; an economy where every working family could succeed; a world at peace where every child could reach their fulfillment.”