An achieving heart:

...Yet his heart gave out, most of all, for being asked too often to care for too many people - of all colors, shapes, tendencies, and backgrounds...

...Phil Burton was not subject to the oft-spoken criticism of liberals that they would rather be righteously prophetic in their stands than get something accomplished...

...The November elections gave the Democrats six new seats, with a 28-17 edge in the delegation over the old lineup of 22-21...

...Foiled in a State Supreme Court challenge, they successfully got a referendum calling for a redrawing of the lines after the '82 elections - and were promptly foiled again when lame-duck Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a new Democratic redistricting plan before George Deukmejian took office...

...arms that will now surely be missed...

...Particularly attentive to voters virtually neglected before - the skid-row poor, welfare families, the blacks, the Chinese, the Mexican-Americans - he has continued to pay attention to them ever since...

...Burton at the same time had kept close tab on congressional elections throughout the country...

...JEREMIAH BARUCH...

...He was a practical radical - keen to see vulnerabilities and strengths, and to know when and where it was necessary to compromise...

...Notwithstanding the substantial aid of environmentalists, it was the poor and the unemployed and particularly the black community that gave him his 17 percentage-point margin of victory...

...His maneuver particularly impressed those generally conservative Democrats from the Eastern coal-producing states - the "coal rats" - including Ohio Representative Wayne Hays...

...Hardly missing a beat, he picked himself up and shepherded through Congress the 1978 "park-barrel" bill which more than doubled the nation's wilderness acreage...

...On the House floor, after his death, member after member rose to mention their appreciation for his election} night calls, his ability to talk about their district's specifics and his advice and support...

...He saw to it that the minimum wage was significantly improved in 1966 with its coverage extended to service employees and farm workers (Burton acquired the necessary conservative votes by exempting certain categories of municipal workers from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act...

...Burton responded with the same energy and skill demonstrated in his earliest legislative victory twenty-six years before...

...Burton lost to Texan Jim Wright by one heartrending vote - 148 to 147...

...If I didn't have more to do in a given day than there is time to do it, I couldn't stand it...

...After that defeat I would say that there was no closer individual in the House to me than Phil...

...Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, recalling that defeat in a tribute to Burton, said, "What a man's man he was, losing a fight which meant everything in the world to him by one vote...

...In his first year he fervently supported the Mississippi Freedom Democrats' challenge to their state's all-white Democratic delegation...

...or to heed his heart's fatigue...

...He walked from apartment to rooming house to flop house, claiming to have met "three out of every ten" voters in the district...

...Burton also skillfully altered the state laws for special elections...

...labor was furious but he fought his allies all the way to keep his commitment...

...Effectively using the DSG as his base, Burton raised campaign money for candidates he thought could win...

...Through his prodigiously detailed knowledge of the nation's congressional districts, he nurtured over a hundred congressional races (his hobby, if he had any at all, was to pore over election returns and census tracts deep into the night, vodka and memory in hand...

...However, his diligent and victorious efforts did his reputation no harm in the Congress...

...Later he would significantly contribute to the Young Democrats becoming a thriving adjunct to the national party...

...Out of a field of eight candidates, his grassroots campaign rolled up 52 percent of the vote - twice that of the nearest runner-up...

...This was the beginning of a lonely crusade that eventually triumphed...

...Becoming chairman of the House Democratic Study Group (DSG) in 1971, he built it up dramatically...

...Increasing the membership from 120 to 165 liberal-progressive Democrats, the DSG was able to deliver crucial votes and hammer out successful floor amendments...

...His foresight was evident two years later when he ran in 1964 to fill the vacancy caused when Democratic U.S...

...After his hospital stay, he continued to push and shove more into his days than they ever could possibly hold - until there were no longer days left: San Francisco's ten-term Congressman Phillip Burton died April 10 of heart failure at the age of fifty-six...

...The 1974 elections produced seventy-five freshman Democrats whose support Burton had hoped to use in his ill-fated climb to majority leader...

...Burton was the first of three remarkable, sons born to Tom Burton, an ascetic man of leftist leanings (he had once been gassed in a picket line) who entered medical school at thirty-six after being a Depression-era salesman...

...Liberal Republican Milton Marks - a popular state assemblyman who was a constant presence in the city - made significant gains by pointing out one of Phil Burton's strongest points as a Representative: he had accomplished a great deal for coal miners, the people of the trust territories, and backpackers throughout the country - but what had he done for the city of San Francisco...

...During the campaign Burton personally rang ten thousand doorbells...

...Immersed in his high school's politics, Phil demanded a formal vote of his athletic club in 1943 when it barred a black schoolmate from membership...

...Still in the glow of his hard-fought victory to become chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, he was unable to rest on his laurels...

...Phil Burton always drove himself willfully and skillfully...

...Burton's apportionment artwork was indeed that of a master...

...He almost singlehandedly (Michael Berman was his other hand and Leroy Hardy his legs) redrew California's districting lines - weaving them in and out to take in a student housing block here, a Jewish condominium complex there...

...Already familiar with his redistricting handiwork of 1961 and 1971, the Republicans still mustered righteous indignation at the unveiling...

...He declared for Congress from the offices of the Sun Reporter - San Francisco's black newspaper...

...The alliance proved to be quite costly for Burton when, after the 1976 elections, he sought the post of majority leader...

...I never saw a person take a defeat so gracefully...

...To them, he would often say, "You are in your mother's arms...

...Burton was still opposed by much of the city's establishment, including its three major newspapers...

...But he saved another chairman targeted by the reformers, Wayne Hays, as repayment of his debt for Hays's support in the Caucus election...

...Fulfilling the Caucus reforms that he initiated two years before, he led the ouster of three veteran chairmen by secret ballot - Agriculture, Armed Services, and Banking...

...His ties to Elizabeth Ray's paramour, his alleged maneuvering of votes to oust liberal contender Richard Boiling, and the estrangement of a handful of his California colleagues, bruised too often by his bullying ways, cost him his long planned-for dream...

...He was personally touched by the plight of black-lung victims - no coal miners in San Francisco...

...Burton had a keen sense of an organization's capacity for power...

...A loss to John McPhall for the whip post - the usual path to the majority leadership - prompted Burton to solidify his political support, and he identified the Democratic Caucus as his vehicle to power...

...he didn't let anyone forget it...

...My contribution to modern art," he said...

...Despite a California landslide for Eisenhower, Maloney, supported by the labor establishment, never knew what hit him...

...As the youngest member elected to the State Assembly, Burton worked towards becoming chairman of the Assembly committee on social welfare where he rewrote California's welfare code...

...election returns into the night, of chain-smoking Chesterfields, of collecting and cajoling colleagues' votes, of drinking a gallon of coffee a day, and of huffing and puffing, though never bluffing, his way in the House cloakroom...

...He had always delivered as much as he could to the disadvantaged and they delivered for him...

...Burton's legendary audaciousness started with his 1956 race for State Assembly against Tom Maloney - a thirty-two-year Republican veteran and the speaker pro tern of the assembly...

...The Republicans pounced on Burton's vulnerable position...

...Tom Burton brought his family to San Francisco in 1939, struggling as a $25-a-week hospital intern when Phil was thirteen...

...As one colleague observed: when he couldn't get one hundred percent, he accepted fifty percent...

...His efforts contributed a fourth of the Democratic gains in the House...

...From his hospital room he was quoted as saying, "I am not built to loaf or jog...

...Burton provided urban votes for farm subsidies in exchange for farm-bloc votes to extend food stamps to strikers...

...In the end, Phil Burton's heart had had enough of his poring over U.S...

...He engineered the enactment of both the cost-of-living escalation clause in Social Security and the supplemental income program presently aiding four million aged, blind, and disabled people...

...Representative John Shelley became mayor of San Francisco...

...His second year, 1965, saw him stand out as one of three congressmen voting against defense supplemental appropriations for Vietnam...

...In 1970, Burton coaxed enough liberal votes to assure passage of a George Mahon-backed cotton subsidy bill - in exchange for conservative Southern support for his proposed black-lung benefits for coal miners...

...From his committee positions on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee (which he correctly calculated as his best opportunity for rapid seniority advancement) and on Education and Labor, he built an enviable legislative record...

...The assets which brought him so near - crafty compromises, complex strategies, and industrious steamrolling - also caused many colleagues to turn their backs on him...

...With the results of the 1980 census, Burton seized upon the California delegation - with 45 seats, the nation's largest - as his new base for operations...

...Typically the big brother, Phil sacrificed good Democratic territory from his own district to bolster his brother John's congressional race, only to have him retire ("the word surprise has a flavor of how I felt," brother Phil was quoted...