A Polish émigré who fled the Nazis and settled in America,
Sala Galante Burton succeeded her husband, the powerful
California Representative Phillip Burton, after he died
suddenly in 1983. In the House, Congresswoman Burton
championed many of the same interests she had worked
on during her decades as a leading figure in the California
Democratic Party: civil rights, women’s reproductive rights,
the environment, and world peace.
Sala Galante was born in Bialystock, Poland, on
April 1, 1925, daughter of Max Galante, a Polish textile
manufacturer. With her Jewish parents she fled Poland in
1939 at the age of 14, just before the Nazi invasion and
occupation. “I saw and felt what happened in Western
Europe when the Nazis were moving,” Burton recalled
years later. “You learn that politics is everybody’s business.
The air you breathe is political—it isn’t just a game for
certain people. We must all be vigilant in terms of whom
we elect to office, vigilant in terms of our civil rights and
liberties.”1 She retained those memories and a hint of
her Old World accent for the remainder of her life. She
attended public schools in San Francisco, and studied at
San Francisco University. From 1949 to 1950, she was
associate director of the California Public Affairs Institute.
Galante also worked with the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People in its efforts to eliminate
job and housing discrimination. Sala Galante met her
husband, Phillip Burton, at a California Young Democrats
convention in 1950. They married three years later and
raised a daughter, Joy, whom Sala Burton had from a
previous marriage that had ended in divorce.
In the 1950s, Sala Burton embarked on an active
political career that paralleled her husband’s rise to influence
in state and national politics. She had a lighter, more genial
touch than her husband’s sometimes brusque approach to
issues. Phil Burton, who lost a race to be House Majority
Leader in 1976 by one vote and was regarded as the dean
of California politics, often referred to her as his better
political half, “the popular Burton.” He added, “I keep Sala
busy repairing all the fences I’ve busted.”2 She was a founder
of the California Democratic Council and served as its vice
president from 1951 to 1954. Burton presided over the San
Francisco Democratic Women’s Forum from 1957 to 1959
and was a member of both the San Francisco County and
California State Democratic Central committees. She also
was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions
in 1956, 1976, 1980, and 1984. In 1964, when Phillip
Burton won the first of 10 consecutive terms to the U.S.
House from a San Francisco district, the Burtons moved
to Washington, DC. In Washington, Sala Burton served
as president of the Democratic Wives of the House and
Senate from 1972 to 1974.
Eight days after Phil Burton died suddenly in April
1983, Sala Burton announced her candidacy to fill her
husband’s unexpired term. She told supporters, “I will
continue in his footsteps.”3 She also minimized gender
issues in the campaign. “I’m not running because I’m a
woman,” Burton told voters during her campaign. “I’m
running because I think I can do more in Congress than
anyone.”4 Her main competitors were Democratic attorney
Richard Doyle, Republican real estate broker Duncan
Howard, and Republican Tom Spinosa, who had lost
several campaigns to Phil Burton. While her husband
used the telephone to gather support, as if it were “an
extension of his body” by one aide’s account, Sala Burton
was a tireless door-to-door campaigner. “I want to go
everywhere,” she said. “I want to feel like I’ve earned
this.”5 Turnout was light at the June 21 special election
(less than 30 percent), but Burton won 57 percent of the
vote in a field of 11 candidates; Howard finished second
with 23 percent.6 In her two re-election campaigns Burton
was never seriously challenged, winning 72 percent against
Spinosa in 1984 and 75 percent against Republican Mike
Garza in 1986.7
When Sala Burton took her seat in the House on
June 28, 1983, she received her husband’s assignments
on two committees: Education and Labor; and Interior
and Insular Affairs. She also received an assignment on
the Select Committee on Hunger during the 98th and
99th Congresses (1983–1987). In the 99th Congress
(1985–1987), after failing in a hard-fought effort to win
a seat on the prestigious Appropriations Committee,
Burton dropped her Education and Labor and her Interior
assignments to get a seat on the influential House Rules
Committee. She served there through the remainder of her
time in Congress, working on the Subcommittee on the
Legislative Process.
Burton set out, in her own words, “to represent, as
my husband did, the dispossessed, the hungry, the poor,
the children, people in trust territories, the aged—those
people who don’t have a lot of lobbying being done for
them.”8 From her committee assignments, Burton was able
to serve as an advocate for a broad range of policies such as
social welfare programs, child nutrition assistance, bilingual
education, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). One
of her first actions was to sign on as a cosponsor of the
ERA. Burton took a special interest in education legislation
for primary- and secondary-school students, helping to
secure funding for federal grants to open public schools for
“latch key” kids who came from households with working
parents. Burton backed provisions to the Higher Education
Act that provided poor women the childcare support to
allow them to attend school. She also wrote an amendment
to outlaw so-called “Saturday night specials”—cheap
handguns—which the Rules Committee adopted but which
was voted down on the House Floor.9 Congresswoman
Burton also authored a bill to create a protective breakwater
for ships moored in an area of San Francisco Bay that was
part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which
her husband created.10 Her support for environmental
protection measures led her to advocate restrictions on oil
drilling off California’s coast. Burton was a noteworthy
critic of military spending under the arms buildup of the
Ronald Reagan administration, opposing the funding of
the MX missile. She also was an opponent of Reagan’s
foreign policy, strongly denouncing the U.S. invasion of
Grenada, voting against aid to Contra rebels in Nicaragua,
and withdrawing her original support for an 18-month
extension of the U.S. Marine occupation in Lebanon.11 She
spoke in defense of Soviet dissidents and Salvadoran
refugees, opposing an immigration reform bill which she
described as discriminatory.12
In the final year of her life, Sala Burton battled cancer,
undergoing surgery in August 1986. Though she easily won
re-election to the 100th Congress (1987–1989), she was
too ill to take the oath of office on the House Floor and, by
special resolution, was sworn in at her home by California
Representative William Donlon (Don) Edwards. The
following day she entered the hospital. In her final weeks,
much the same way that Phil Burton had supported her
as a successor, Sala Burton said that when the seat became
vacant, she would support the candidacy of her campaign
chairwoman, Nancy Pelosi. Burton died in Washington,
DC, on February 1, 1987. Her death brought to a close the
“Burton era” in the House, since Phil’s brother, John Lowell
Burton, had retired from a neighboring congressional
district in 1983.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
[ Top ]
