Family Ties Make for Political Drama in S.F.

SAN FRANCISCO —  In Hollywood, conventional wisdom says you can’t make movies about politics because no one cares enough to watch.

In San Francisco, you can’t hold a political race without everyone watching every minute.

This election season’s most captivating race here stars the daughter of a storied San Francisco politician and the son of a Sacramento auto mechanic. Other featured players are the father who got his colleagues to contribute to his child’s campaign and the mayor--Dad’s buddy for decades--who insists he hasn’t greased the daughter’s path. Clint Eastwood makes a cameo appearance as the main draw at a fund-raiser for her.

The prize? The position of public defender--that unglamorous office that defends accused criminals who can’t afford counsel. It pays $140,000, about as much as a third-year associate in a tony San Francisco law firm makes.

But Kimiko Burton and Jeff Adachi want it bad, and San Francisco seems intrigued.

Burton, 37, who was appointed public defender last year by Mayor Willie Brown after her predecessor left during his term, is the latest of the fabled Burton clan to run for political office. She is the only child of state Sen. John Burton, arguably the most powerful politician in the state next to Gov. Gray Davis.

Her uncle was the late U.S. Rep. Phil Burton, legendary champion of social and environmental causes. She worked in the public defender’s office for five years in the early ‘90s before leaving to work for the state Board of Equalization, California’s tax authority.

Adachi, 42, who once had a job as a duck plucker--”40 cents a duck, it’s pretty good when you’re a teenager,” he said--worked in the public defender’s office for 15 years, rising to chief attorney, until Kim Burton came in and replaced him with her own chief of staff.

This year they’ve both walked neighborhoods and attended house parties. They’ve submitted themselves to grueling rounds of interviews with San Francisco’s dozens of Democratic clubs, as if they were going through sorority rush.

“The only thing I’ve wanted to do is be a public defender,” says Adachi.

“It is where my passion lies,” says Burton.

Unusual System for an Unusual City

It’s unclear why San Francisco is the only city in the state and one of two in the country--the other is Tampa, Fla.--that elects a public defender. But it’s fitting that the phenomenon would occur in a city with a strong social conscience. If any body politic would want to have a hand in deciding who represents its poor on criminal charges, it would be San Francisco’s.

That said, the office rarely generates election heat. The city’s first public defender, Frank Egan, was elected in 1921. Not since he was tried and convicted in 1932 of murdering a client--he was moonlighting in trusts and estates work--has so much attention been focused on the public defender’s office.

But San Franciscans love a good show, and this is the juiciest thing going. “There’s nothing else all that exciting,” says a local litigator who follows politics. “We’ve hardly heard of [gubernatorial candidate Richard] Riordan.”

Many see the race, rightly or wrongly, as a gauge of how much power the Burton name still carries.

“[John Burton’s] daughter’s race is his canary in the mine shaft--to see if there is any oxygen left for the Burton machine in San Francisco,” says Peter Keane, the dean of Golden Gate Law School and a supporter of Adachi. “I think it has tremendous symbolic importance.”

Here, Burton is about as high-profile a family name as you can get. The Burtons are beloved as protectors of the poor, civil rights and the environment.

Phil Burton is credited with creating Golden Gate National Recreation Area. John Burton is a formidable political force; the Burtons have lost one election among them in 50 years.

A small city (population 770,000) with a long history of social activism, San Francisco has a political structure built not on party politics--most players are liberal or ultra-liberal--but on issues, people and relationships.

As the tapestry of personal connections goes, it ranks somewhere between a Tolstoy novel and “The Young and the Restless.” Not as complex as the former; not as much sex as the latter.

Kimiko Burton’s campaign has been fraught with rumors about how she got appointed to the job in the first place. When Public Defender Jeff Brown left last year for a seat on the Public Utilities Commission, both Burton and Adachi wanted the job and told the mayor as much.

Adachi was the No. 2 lawyer in the office; he estimates he handled 2,500 cases, 100 of them as jury trials, over the course of 15 years. Burton was director of the mayor’s Criminal Justice Council, coordinating city departments involved in criminal justice issues and bringing in $46 million in federal and state grants. She helped fund a variety of juvenile justice programs, including a high school to help troubled youths.

But rumors spread that Brown appointed Burton as a favor to her father.

“I don’t know Jeff Adachi from Adam,” says an exasperated Brown. “I have known Kimiko Burton since her birth. Why, in the name of heaven, if I have an opportunity to name someone, would I name someone I don’t know?”

Burton has been endorsed by all the local heavyweights--the mayor, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi. If she loses, political observers wonder, is the Burton dynasty damaged?

“Whatever the outcome, it will show what machine politics is all about,” says Sam Kwong, president of the Chinese American Democratic Club, which has endorsed Adachi.

John Burton could face the electorate himself in another two years. There is speculation that if he must leave the state Senate due to term limits in 2004, he may run for mayor. Or he could try to stay in the Senate if Proposition 45 passes. (That ballot initiative essentially says politicians must comply with term limits unless they get a written excuse from their constituents.)

“This is about the future of San Francisco politics,” says Adachi, stoking a theme that he has made a key part of his campaign. In his modest townhouse law office on sloping Fillmore Street, just below the stately mansions of Pacific Heights, Adachi has posted charts tracking his opponent’s spending. “This is about whether the next generation of machine politicians will be put in place or whether independent politicians like myself will win.”

Those are fighting words, folks say.

“This man [Adachi] has come by and said, ‘You’re a juggernaut and I’m a fresh face,’” says Ed Moose, a restaurateur who’s been schmoozing with politicians for three decades, most recently at his own place, Moose’s, on Washington Square. As well-read on politics as any consultant, Moose counts himself a longtime John Burton friend and admirer.

“Shoot--this wouldn’t bother John a bit,” says Moose, sitting at his bar, nursing a small vodka with a grapefruit-juice chaser, “but you start saying things about his daughter and it’s infuriating. It’s personal.”

The Burtons protest that Adachi isn’t all that independent. They like to note that he appeared in a commercial for Willie Brown during the last mayoral campaign. (Adachi says it was a tiny part in a big commercial.)

No Apologies for Burton’s Backing

In a contest of political clout, Kimiko Burton wins. Neither Burton denies this.

“I stand guilty of trying to help my daughter,” says John Burton, who is known for his ability to persuade people to do what he wants. “I sent out a letter,” he says, estimating it went to about 700 or 800 people, “and said, ‘My daughter is running and I’d appreciate your help with it--and if you don’t, I’m going to shoot you.’”

Burton offers that statement in his trademark playful but blunt manner--and dismisses critics who insist he is twisting arms. “Nobody has done anything they didn’t want to do,” he says.

Burton adds that many of the marquee names who support his daughter know her well. “She’s known Barbara Boxer since she was 10. She worked for Nancy Pelosi.”

But he acknowledges that the race is significant beyond who gets to run the public defender’s office.

“There are a lot of people who have been in the city less than six years who have no concept of the contributions my brother and I have made to the city,” he says. “What they know is that anybody who has been around is bad, so new people are good.”

Jeff Brown, the former public defender, had a famous California name when he beat his opponent in his first race, in 1978. “I had a very gentlemanly race in 1978,” says Brown, a cousin of Jerry Brown, the former governor and the current mayor of Oakland. (Jeff Brown ran five more times unopposed.)

There’s nothing gentle about this contest. It’s downright catty.

Adachi says Burton doesn’t have enough experience to be a misdemeanor supervisor in the office. Burton suggests Adachi puts courtroom performance above clients’ best interests. Jeff Brown un-endorsed Adachi, switching his support to Burton, saying Adachi cuts corners.

Law school dean Keane--chief attorney in the public defender’s office before Adachi--calls his successor “a first-rate trial lawyer,” and says Burton was a complainer and a “princess” during her early years as a deputy public defender.

Down the street from Burton’s campaign headquarters, in a dark wood-walled eatery called Kate O’Brien’s, the Irish-born bar manager, Janis Geraghty, can’t vote, but she still knows the players. “She had her benefit here, and my boyfriend played at an Adachi benefit,” Geraghty says. “I liked them both.”

Given all the nastiness, it’s surprising how similar the two candidates are--graduates of Hastings College of Law, proud liberals, married, parents of one toddler apiece, descendants of Japanese Americans. All of Adachi’s grandparents were interned in camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. Burton’s maternal grandmother escaped internment only because she lived in Hawaii.

Burton grew up marching with her father and boycotting grapes. Adachi volunteered on a wrongly convicted Korean immigrant’s defense team.

But Adachi believes public defenders should be vigorous in court. “When I started in the office, I set out immediately to establish myself as a trial lawyer,” he says. “I worked hard at learning the science and art and skill of being a trial lawyer.”

Burton contends that the key is to serve the client, and that doesn’t always mean going to trial--an arena in which she concedes that she has less experience than Adachi. “But I’m not afraid to go to trial,” she says. “The fact that you’ve done X number of trials doesn’t make you a better lawyer.”

The San Francisco Chronicle has endorsed Adachi, but even at this point no one seems ready to predict who will win. No matter who triumphs, San Franciscans are engrossed in the show.

“We don’t have to watch TV,” quips Robert Barnes, past president of the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Democratic Club, which supports Burton. “We have drama in politics.”