The public probably hasn’t seen the last of Roland Burris. The departing U.S. senator whose December 2008 appointment was clouded by controversy is now considering a run for mayor of Chicago.
If Burris enters the race, he will join a star-studded field of fellow Democrats that includes former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Rep. Danny Davis and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
During an interview last week in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, Burris, 73, said his Chicago supporters were working to meet the Monday, Nov. 22, deadline to generate the 12,500 signatures to put him on the mayoral ballot. As of Monday night, Jim Allen, communications director for Chicago’s Board of Election Commissioners, confirmed a petition had been turned in for a potential Burris candidacy, but he said he did not yet know the number of signatures.
Burris said the idea of a run was his supporters’ idea, not his.
“I’m really playing hard to get here,” he said, grinning.
The senator’s wife, Berlean Burris, had a stronger opinion.
“You don’t want to know what I think about that,” she said. “I really think that we’ve paid our dues to society. He’s done a wonderful job and he is a senior statesman at this point.”
Burris’ announcement is the latest turn in a career that has managed to avoid derailment despite a string of political mishaps that began just after Barack Obama was elected president.
Three weeks after former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on charges of running a pay-to-play system that allegedly included attempts to sell Obama’s old Senate seat, Blagojevich appointed Burris to the Obama post. The Dec. 30 move generated criticism from Senate Democrats, who had urged Blagojevich not to take such action. As a defiant Burris reported to Washington in January 2009, television coverage followed his compact 5’6”, 160-pound frame being swept along by a storm of cameras, reporters and security. The Senate refused to admit Burris, but a week later, then-Vice President Cheney swore him in.
Drama unfolded in Illinois too. As state lawmakers heard from witnesses in their review of whether to impeach Blagojevich, Burris failed to bring up in testimony to a state House panel that he’d had a November 2008 telephone conversation with Robert Blagojevich, the former governor’s brother, in which he expressed interest in the Obama seat and also promised to write a check to the former governor’s campaign. Burris later recounted the conversation in an affidavit. In November 2009, the Senate Ethics Committee issued a “qualified admonition” to Burris — a mid-level rebuke — for his conduct during his appointment.
Burris’ performance in the Senate has generated reaction ranging from praise for his support for a Democratic, social and civil rights agenda to criticism for what some interpreted as dishonesty and greed for power in the evolution of the Blagojevich affair. Several people contacted for this story declined to comment or simply did not return telephone calls. Those that did respond had strong opinions.
“These last two years could have been the capstone to Sen. Burris’ distinguished career,” said Democratic strategist Anthony Coley. “Instead, it was defined by inconsistent, misleading statements that severely impacted his ability to serve and deliver for his constituents.”
Coley has run the press operations for three senators — Georgia’s Zell Miller, New Jersey’s Jon Corzine and the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
The strategist added that the Burris controversy is “also a reminder to black America that we shouldn’t automatically support public officials just because they share our skin tone.”
But others on the Hill praised Burris as an ally. Back at the beginning of 2009, Rep. Barbara Lee, the outgoing chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, to seat Burris during the controversy at the beginning of 2009.
“It was the right thing to do,” said the California Democrat. “Constitutionally, there was no legal reason why Sen. Burris should not have been seated.”
She added he’s been an active caucus member. “His voice is badly needed. He gave us a lot of insight in terms of Senate strategy,” she said.
Lee declined to talk about the Blagojevich affair.
The NAACP gave Burris a 100 percent vote rating, said Hilary Shelton, director of the organization’s Washington Bureau.
“They were always very short conversations because he understood and he got it right away,” Shelton said.
Burris championed causes on the Senate floor too, including opposition to measures requiring voters to produce photo identification. Critics have said such a policy can deter people of color.
Now, perhaps, depending on his decision about the mayor’s race, Burris have room to pursue more personal causes. There might be more time to spend with his wife, his adult children, Rolanda and Roland II (he points out the names were his wife’s idea), and his grandchildren.
Health is something he tries to maintain too. In 2004, he underwent quintuple bypass surgery. But last week, the Senate was the biggest thing on Burris’ mind.
“I’m sad,” he said, sitting behind the desk once used by the late Sen. Paul Simon and in the chair once used by Barack Obama. “I really love and enjoy working in this august body called the United States Senate.”
In his farewell speech last week before a sparsely populated Senate floor, Burris lamented that the chamber has typically had few African-Americans, and denounced partisan bickering. During last week’s interview, he said he is proud of his short congressional run that included casting the 60th and final vote to pass health reform. The Library of Congress shows Burris was busy in the Senate, serving as chief sponsor to 60 pieces of legislation.
“Number one, I have no regrets,” he said of his controversial run. “I was very diligent in determining whether I should take the appointment. I checked around extensively and talked to people and they indicated that the governor was doing right and the best person he could appoint was me.”
Burris’ road to the Senate has been long.
He grew up the youngest of three children in Centralia, a southern Illinois town of about 13,000 that is closer to Clarksville, Tenn., than it is to Chicago. Burris’ father, Earl Burris, was a laborer with the Illinois Central railroad and the family also ran Burris Grocery. The younger Burris made sure the shelves were dusted and stocked. His mother, Emma Burris, worked in the store from about 5:30 in the morning until 9 at night.
On Memorial Day in 1953, when Burris was 15, he and his older brother helped integrate the local public swimming pool. The moment passed without incident. But later that day, Earl Burris complained that the lawyer he’d hired just in case had not shown up.
“He went on to say … that if we as a race of people are going to get anywhere in this society, we have to have lawyers and elected officials that responsible and responsive. I said, ‘That’s what I’m going to do,’ ” Burris recalled.
He graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a degree in political science. After a year as an exchange student at the University of Hamburg, he went to Howard University School of Law on a full scholarship.
Out in the world, Burris got his first dose of discrimination when he went to work for Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust, the largest bank in the state. During training, he watched white colleagues get placed in jobs while he was bounced around from one phase of the training program to another.
“When I finally got assigned, I wound up in the back room of the trust tax division,” he said. “I didn’t have a carpet and mahogany desk; I had tile and an aluminum desk.”
Burris’ job was to staple tax returns. He asked a vice president why he wasn’t advancing like his colleagues.
“He said, ‘Roland, I didn’t create racism in this society and I as one individual cannot change it. If you’re going to make it in this bank, you’re going to have to be 10 times better than your white counterparts.’ ”
Burris said he went home and devised a plan — he would give the bank five years to make him an officer.
“I brought in money. I worked night and day, managing campaigns, sleeping two and three hours a night,” Burris said.
A few months shy of five years, the board of directors made him the first African-American officer of the bank.
Through his career, he would break racial barriers. He became the first African-American bank examiner for the Treasury Department’s comptroller of the currency in 1963. And he was the first African-American elected as comptroller of Illinois, serving from 1979 to 1991.
Burris also served as director of general services for Illinois from 1973 to 1976 and Illinois attorney general from 1991 to 1994.
Outside of a minor dustup over his hiring a nephew when he was attorney general, his career had been free of major controversy — until the Blagojevich appointment.
Berlean Burris recalled she had just come home from the hair salon back in 2008 when her husband told her a Blagojevich lawyer had telephoned him about the Obama post. She didn’t want him to take the job at first.
“There had been so much media surrounding this whole thing,” she said. “But then, I went in my bedroom and it just came to me: Look, you cannot stifle somebody else’s dream.”
Later, buzz swirled around questions over whether Burris had “paid” for the Senate appointment.
“I asked my husband one question: ‘Did you have anything to do with this whole thing of him trying to sell the seat?’ ” Berlean Burris recalled. “My husband said no, and once he told me that, I was going to stick with him for the duration.”
Berlean Burris has written a book — Just Stand: God’s Faithfulness Never Fails — about the praying she and her husband did during that time.
In his recent interview, Burris said he made political contributions to Blagojevich because he was a fellow Democrat, and that wasn’t unusual.
“He was going to be the first Democratic governor in 26 years and I knew about government — I helped his staff,” Burris said.
When Blagojevich was running for reelection, Burris and his consulting partner decided they would contribute. “I would talk to my partner and my partner would give some and I would write a check. Guess how much that amounted to — $5,000.”
But even if Burris believed he was right to accept the appointment, public clamor rose. Burris said his advisors told him it was all or nothing.
“They convinced me — ‘Roland, put that mess behind you. You’ve got to make a decision – either you’re going to be a senator or a candidate. Which one?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to be a senator.’ ”
He said he remembered those days as dark.
“When you have 10 or 12 generators at your home at 4:30 in the morning with big spotlights and your neighbors can’t sleep and you can’t walk out of doors and they put spotlights right on your home, and they’re hollering wherever you go with the microphones — that went on for about three weeks,” he said. “One thing I knew — I wasn’t going anywhere because I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
He said he was hurt by the aggressive media coverage that questioned whether he was corrupt and dishonest.
“I have never been corrupt in my life,” Burris declared. “My whole thing was transparency.”
Berlean Burris said that because her husband’s career has focused on finances and taxes, he’s very careful when it comes to those things.
“He dots every I and crosses every T and the kids and I, we learned to live with it because that’s how he is,” she said. He says it wasn’t true that he blocked out the media. He says he simply decided that he was a senator, and he would talk to the media about Senate business only.
“But they (the media) ,” he said. “They wanted to get into, ‘What did the governor say?’ Just trying to keep the mess going.’ ”
In the meantime, Burris has some decisions to make regarding his future. He said he has signed a book contract and is talking to writers and agents. He also is in debt hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal bills related to his attempts to be seated in the Senate and to Blagojevich’s impeachment. He also said he will probably take part in the speaking circuit.
In the meantime, Burris has some packing up to do. He was not able to raise the money to run for a full term and a judge ruled that Burris’ appointment did not extend until the end of Obama’s term.
Burris’ successor, Republican Mark Kirk, will be sworn in after Thanksgiving. Late last week, cardboard boxes in various stages of being filled crowded his suite of Senate offices, as did stacks of files and papers. But he is clear that this is not the end for him.
“There’s one thing I won’t do,” Burris said, nighttime Washington showing through the window behind him. “I won’t go out to pasture,” he said.