Burton, Sala Galante, 1925-1987

Sala Galante Burton (April 1, 1925 – February 1, 1987) was a Polish-born American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she served served as a United States Representative from California from 1983 until her death from colon cancer in Washington, D.C., in 1987.

Born Sala Galante into a Jewish family in Białystok, Poland, her family immigrated in 1939 before the German invasion of Poland to the United States, and she attended public schools in San Francisco and then the University of San Francisco. 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.

Burton 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. 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. 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.” She served as an advocate for a broad range of policies such as social welfare programs, child nutrition assistance, bilingual education, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Burton was a noteworthy critic of military spending under the arms buildup of the Ronald Reagan administration and spoke in defense of Soviet dissidents and Salvadoran refugees, opposing an immigration reform bill which she described as discriminatory.

In the final year of her life, Sala Burton battled cancer, undergoing surgery in August 1986. 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. She died in Washington, DC, on February 1, 1987. Nancy Pelosi would win the special election to succeed Burton.