The ambition of Roland Burris

Roland W. Burris, right, and David Sykuta, executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council, exhort the faithful attending a June 10 rally against gasoline tax increases.       Photo by Max Schnorf, comptroller's photographer.

Chaos dominated Chicago politics on December 1 when the city council met to select a successor to Harold Washington. At issue was who could best carry on the reforms of the city's first black mayor. There were marches, chants and threats. Some called it mob rule. The uncertainty continued until 4:01 the next morning.

There was no intraparty antagonism at a Brown County Democratic fundraiser that same night. There the enemy was clearly the Republican party. Chuck (Charles W.) Scholz welcomed Democrats to the Mount Sterling Knights of Columbus Hall and told the group he had been worried about the hail that morning. "It was only the size of the average Republican's brain, so there wasn't any damage," Scholz said. The audience loved it, and laughing with the crowd was the first black elected to statewide office in Illinois: Comptroller Roland W. Burris. He and a state trooper were the only blacks in the room.

Burris almost did not make it to Mount Sterling because of the Chicago situation. It looked in early afternoon as though the Chicago City Council decision would be postponed, and Burris and his aides finally decided there was nothing to be done in Chicago. There is work in Mount Sterling. Brown County Democratic Chairman Ed Teefey is preparing to challenge incumbent Rep. Jeff Mays (R-96, Quincy) and wants Burris at a fundraiser. Teefey and Burris had been unable to get together on a date in November, but during dinner Teefey calls Burris "energetic" and says, "He is highly thought of down here."

Burris spends most of the time on the trip from Springfield to Brown County talking to a reporter. As the car rolls into Mount Sterling an aide briefs him on who will be there, who will have primary opposition and how Burris had run in Brown County. While local candidates are being recognized and giving their speeches Burris watches the audience, to determine the tone of his address, he said later. The crowd is quiet at first but starts to warm toward the end of the preliminaries and greets Burris with a standing ovation. They get the emotional speech, or as Burris would call it, the one with "the spirit."

It is a good show. Shirley McComb, state central committeewoman from Petersburg, calls Burris "the best speaker in the state." Burris greets the various county chairmen. He has precinct committeemen raise their hands and praises them as the frontline troops: "Any statewide elected official who does not give them their recognition, their due, ought to have his or her head examined because that's how we live. All politics are local."

Burris pokes fun at lawyers, including himself. "You know what they say about lawyers, don't you? Lawyers are just ministers that couldn't get ordained. Sometimes we think we can get up here and preach." They laugh.

Burris thanks the Democrats. "Any time you beat Alan Dixon in any county you know darn well you're doing all right. Roland Burris beat Alan Dixon in Brown County." They applaud.

Burris teases the audience. "You got radio here in Mount Sterling. You get news, right?" They laugh.

Burris is serious, too. He requests and gets a moment of silence for Harold Washington.

Burris then hits his theme for the night: Be proud to be Democrats and work hard. "They [Republicans] made us go around and feel guilty because we have helped people, Democrats. There's nothing wrong with the GI Bill. There's nothing wrong with helping a person get a college education. There's nothing wrong with taking care of senior citizens. That's what the Democratic party is for, but the Republican party has made us feel guilty about it." He is interrupted by applause.

Burris spends a lot of time on the chicken dinner circuit. He

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has the time. Being state comptroller is not a job that requires that he be at his desk every day. Burris' predecessor, Michael J. Bakalis, described it as the office that "no one knows about and fewer people care about." Now Burris is looking to move off the chicken dinner circuit and on to higher office. He has committed to no office but has put out the word that he is exploring a gubernatorial run.

Burris has been around Springfield since 1973, when he joined Gov. Dan Walker's administration as director of General Services. Before that he had been the first black bank examiner with the U.S. Treasury Department and the first black vice president of Continental Illinois National Bank. After primary defeats in campaigns for state representative and comptroller, he was elected comptroller in 1978. In 1985 he challenged the incumbent black vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Richard Hatcher, the mayor of Gary. Burris says he ran because he was unhappy with all the infighting in the party. "What I saw was all the confrontation and internal fighting," Burris says. He lost the vote in the black caucus but won on the floor. Some blacks accused him of being an "Uncle Tom," and Burris compares the ensuing furor to a milder version of that surrounding Chicago's new mayor, Eugene Sawyer. He says he did not respond and that it has since subsided. In 1986 he had been prepared to run for attorney general, but dropped back to run for reelection when Adlai E. Stevenson III ran for governor and Atty. Gen. Neil F. Hartigan dropped his gubernatorial campaign.

Burris has run a credible office, without scandal, since he was elected comptroller. Douglas L. Whitley, president of the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois, says he has always had the highest regard for Burris' operation. "They are the sole source of really good long-term data on state spending and revenue receipts," Whitley says. When Burris declared his opposition to and campaigned against Gov. James R. Thompson's tax hike proposal last year, the distinction between comptroller and politician started to blur, says Whitley, who adds that he has seen no visible decline in the quality of the office's work. Whitley counts himself among those who think Burris was hurt, overall, by his foray into the tax hike battle. "My impression is that there were more negatives than positives. Is he saying what he's saying because he's right, or because it's politically popular to take that stand?" Whitley questions.

Burris' performance during the tax hike debate has drawn mixed reviews from fellow Democrats. A Democratic lawmaker says privately that voters will forget who opposed the Thompson tax hike of 1986. But Burris' contradictory positions will be remembered both by politicians and the media.

If any groups were ready to support a tax hike, they were legislative black caucuses. Sen. Richard Newhouse (D-13, Chicago), chairman of the Senate black/minority caucus, says he does not think Burris hurt his standing among blacks. "I would describe the comptroller's relationship with the black community as good," says Newhouse, who also represented Mayor Washington in the Senate. Had it come down to a hard issue of education versus a tax hike the comptroller may have been hurt more, Newhouse believes. And he says he admires the comptroller's courage to take what may be an unpopular stand.

Burris had pointed out before, during and after the 1986 gubernatorial election that Illinois was spending more money than it was taking in. When Thompson proposed a tax increase in March, Burris opposed it. Lawmakers balked, refused to hike taxes and passed a budget they said was balanced but which the governor said was $360 million out of balance. On July 2 Burris summoned reporters to his office and termed the legislative budget "responsible." He ended up arguing with reporters who questioned how a budget can be responsible if it

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will, as lawmakers said, leave nothing in the bank a year later. "We look at the big numbers," Burris contended. He continued, "I think we've been more right than anybody else." One aide later admitted that Burris was caught off guard during the exchange.

Five months later, Burris continues to maintain that the legislative budget was responsible. "What I wanted the General Assembly to do was just to not pass that increase and look at where the spending was. And they did that. This is why I quote that they passed a responsible budget." And Burris insists that Thompson need not have cut $363 million from the lawmakers' budget. Progress towards fiscal health was possbile without Thompson's cuts, but it would have come more slowly, Burris says. After Thompson made his cuts Burris proposed a program of borrowing between funds and delayed spending to allow restoration of $160 million in education cuts. In short, the plan would have increased spending in the 1988 fiscal year but reduced the money available for the 1989 fiscal year. Burris' proposal got little consideration.

Other Burris' proposals have met the same fate. He proposed in 1986 that Illinois hike its income tax and reduce its sales tax to take advantage of federal tax changes. Nothing was changed. He has advocated a new computerized accounting system. Thompson this year vetoed all finding for the project. Burris urged slating of a black woman for statewide office in 1986. Democrats slated a white woman against the strongest Republican incumbent. Burris criticized credit card interest rates in 1985. That issue was taken over by state Treasurer Jerry Cosentino.

Where some could see inability to get things done, Burris sees sound ideas. "I have established myself as a legitimate force within state government and not just a person who shoots from the hip," he says. Specifically Burris contends he helped defeat the 1986 Thompson tax increase proposal. "Some people may not want to give me credit for that, but I will certainly take it. I think that I had a great deal of impact by going across this state and saying let's get our house in order before we come back to the taxpayers for more money." Of his other proposals, Burris notes that two women, one white and one black, have been slated by Cook County Democrats. The swap of sales for income taxes may have been too complicated, he says: "People don't really grasp the significance." And computerization of the state accounting system enjoyed legislative support and was cut by the governor to punish him for his tax hike opposition, Burris says. Lawmakers could not put the money back in place of spending for day care, Alzheimer's disease and hemophiliacs, he says.

Burris says his present position is the culmination of goals he set when he was 15 after integration of a swimming pool in his home town of Centralia. Burris' father went first to Chicago then to East St. Louis to find a lawyer. He paid a $100 retainer and on Memorial Day of 1953 Burris, his brother and three other young blacks swam without incident. But the lawyer never showed up. During the celebration afterwards Burris recalls his father saying, "We as a race of people, if we're going to get anywhere, we've got to have lawyers and elected officials who are responsible and responsive." Burris achieved his goal: in 1963 he graduated from Howard University Law School and in 1978 he was elected comptroller.

Burris tells the swimming pool story when he addresses school classes. He also tells the students how "cool" he was during high school. "If I hadn't been so cool in those first two years, I wouldn't have gotten a D in Latin and a D in geometry. . . . If I hadn't been so cool, I would have graduated with honors."

Race figures in another prominent Burris tale, this one from the 1984 U.S. Senate primary. Burris told an interviewer that if he were white, he would already be governor. The comptroller does not talk like that today, but neither does he recant. Burris says a vice president of Continental Illinois Bank told him that to succeed at the bank he had to be 10 times better than his white counterparts. "I mean that was told to me to my face, that I would have to be 10 times better than my white counterparts. So if I succeeded, I excelled — which I did — what does that mean?" During the same interview Burris also made a crack about renaming Illinois from the Land of Lincoln to the Land of Burris. That, he insists, was a throwaway comment not intended seriously or for quote.

But it has led to suggestions that the comptroller suffers from an inflated ego. Some who have been close to him say that is not true. Donald H. Schaefer, Burris' press secretary for five years, says the man has no bigger ego than other politicians. "If someone has a big ego, they would be very difficult to work with. I don't think he was," Schaefer says. Schaefer credits Burris with streamlining the office and making state records more easily accessible to the public and news media.

"He [Burris] is a nice man, plain and simple," says William Foster, who served as deputy comptroller for four years. Foster says Burris took advice and wasn't convinced he personally had all the answers. And Foster found no huge ego in the man, but does offer an explanation of what others see: "I've worked with a lot of politicians over the years. I don't think his ego's bigger than most. Sometimes the impression is left because he feels the need to be a little more assertive than most, because of the racial issue."

"He is a good guy. I like him. Overall I think he's done a good job," says Bakalis, who held the office before Burris and bested him in the 1976 primary. Bakalis says Burris has worked hard getting around Illinois and speaking at chicken dinners like the one in Brown County. "I'm not sure he's viewed as a major powerhouse like a Madigan, a Rock or a Hartigan." Bakalis, who himself lost a 1978 challenge to Thompson, has watched Burris make the pitch to run for higher office and warns, "Because somebody does well votewise in a lower office, doesn't automatically mean he will do better in higher office." He cites the example of Secy. of State Michael J. Howlett's unsuccessful 1976 bid for governor.

Roland Burris is intelligent, articulate and ambitious. As he readies a move for higher office, the questions will become sharper. The biggest question is whether Illinois voters will elect a black governor named Roland Burris. Burris says, "Are there people who will be against me because of my race? You absolutely better believe there are. But then there are some who are going to be out there pushing me because of my race. And I just hope that there are more of them than there are of the others."□

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