How Do You Shut Down An Outrageous Hypocrite? Take a Tip From Russ Baker, The Reporter Who Forced Dan Burton To Pipe Down

Last night I had dinner with Russ Baker, who I have sitting on the other side of the room signing copies of Family of Secrets. The book's amazing and we wrote lots about it when it came out last year. We'll be giving autographed copies as soon as I figure out a good contest. Meanwhile, though, Russ told me this fascinating story about everybody's least favorite Hoosier, Dan Burton. Or at least he used to be everybody's least favorite Hoosier... until Russ rubbed his snout in his own crap and smacked him upside the head with a rolled up newspaper. One of America's foremost and most thorough investigative journalists, Russ spent a good part of 1998 digging into a sleazy right-wing congressman best known for calling President Clinton a "scumbag." At the end, he wrote so extensive an exposé of the predatory congressman's womanizing and financial shenanigans that Burton swears Russ was working for the White House-- patently absurd-- and forswore the kind of reprehensible and outrageous partisan behavior that brought him to the nation's attention.

A "simple majority" of our current elected officials have overstepped boundaries. Our focus should be to correct this erroneous behavior. I want to guide us out of this unconstitutional thinking, closed door meeting, and back room dealing existence.

I am a conservative American that demands a fair, noble, and constitutional abiding government. The amount of "big government" existing in our nation needs to be reduced. We will have greater success providing less government and more freedoms. We need to find real solutions to our problems and compromise egos to make them happen. I believe the recently passed healthcare bill is constitutionally questionable and should be repealed.

That quote wasn't from Dan Burton. It's from a self-described anti-choice, anti-cap & trade, pro-"free" trade conservative Democrat, Tim Crawford, running against Burton. There's a lot he could run on-- starting with Russ' article about Burton's post. But he'd rather talk about how much he loves the NRA and how he wants to repeal healthcare reform. Nate Silver rates his chance of beating Burton "zero." I'm relieved. A smart Democratic candidate might want to take up the story of how Burton, who was one of President Clinton's most vociferous critics, admitted to having fathered a child out of wedlock. And that's the least outrageous part of the Dan Burton story that few in Indiana know and-- with candidates like Tim Crawford-- will never know.

Burton's political career has been punctuated by uncompromising sermons on personal morality in high places [and]... as chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Burton cast himself as a moral watchdog for political fundraising... Burton's critics and not a few of his friends find it strange, however, that the congressman is given to such strident moralizing. He has repeatedly faced questions about his own campaign fund-raising tactics, including accusations from a lobbyist that Burton strong-armed him for contributions and threatened to destroy his career if he did not pay up.

Burton receives a 100-percent rating from the Christian Coalition for voting its positions on key issues. Yet the championing of family values by this father of three is undermined by a personal history of marital infidelity. In September, fearful of revelations that might surface in an article by this reporter, then scheduled for publication in Vanity Fair, Burton admitted that he had fathered an illegitimate son in an extramarital affair in the early 1980s.

This did not come as a complete surprise to reporters following Burton, who had been hearing rumors about a former Burton mistress with an out-of-wedlock "love child" for years. The woman involved, who is now in her late 40s, told Salon she worked for a Cabinet-level state agency when Burton came calling, wooing her with flowers. The woman, who declined to be interviewed at length or on the record, did affirm reluctantly that Burton is her son's father. The boy, who recently turned 15, would have been conceived during the 1982 campaign when Burton was first elected to Congress as "a man who cares."

But Burton's moral standing is further clouded by allegations of on-the-job sexual harassment, including an accusation that he groped a lobbyist from Planned Parenthood in the mid-1990s when she visited his Washington office. According to several sources, Burton has also maintained sexual relationships with women on his congressional and campaign payrolls.

...Burton is regarded by many colleagues, even in his own party, as an obstructionist and something of a kook. Glowering or smiling through gritted teeth, he delights in blocking committee action by raising procedural issues, talking until his allotted time is up, then, after losing a voice vote, demanding a recorded count -- thereby flushing indignant colleagues from their offices for an exercise in futility. "More than a decade of contention on many issues has purchased Burton a reputation in Congress as something of a flake," wrote the Indianapolis Star's George Stuteville in 1993. "Members of the Hoosier delegation ... note privately that virtually everything Burton proposes is bound to be defeated."

Burton regularly makes headlines with attention-getting stunts. In 1993, he fired a rifle at a "headlike thing" in his backyard in front of a homicide expert to prove his theory that Clinton advisor Vincent Foster did not commit suicide but was murdered and that his body was moved to a Virginia park. In 1995, he wrote Clinton, demanding to know whether taxpayers were footing the cost of stationery and postage for the fan club dedicated to Socks, the first cat. (They were not.)

...Burton, the family-values champion, has been married for 38 years, but he is known to have a marked weakness for attractive women. "All of the important people know the truth about Burton and pretend he's upstanding," says Harrison Ullmann, a former Indianapolis Star reporter who edits NUVO Newsweekly, Indianapolis's alternative paper. After Burton's September admission that he had fathered an illegitimate child, Dick Cady wrote in the Indianapolis Star, "During part of the 1970s and '80s, Dan Burton was known as the biggest skirt-chaser in the Indiana legislature ... Privately, some of his fellow Republicans expressed embarrassment. Lobbyists whispered about the stories of Burton's escapades. Statehouse reporters joked about him. Yet no one ever wrote about, or probably thought about writing anything. To the people who sent him first to the legislature and then to Congress, Burton was Mr. Conservative, the devout husband and father who espoused family values."

...From the time of Burton's election to Indiana's General Assembly in 1966 at the age of 28 to his departure for Washington 16 years later, there were a number of alleged incidents involving women -- stories not only of philandering, but also of an established pattern of sexual harassment. "Everybody who was around him at the Statehouse and everyone who knows him at all says the same thing: God, how did Dan Burton get away with this?" grumbles a female Statehouse lobbyist.

"None of the [female] staff wanted to be caught in a hall with him," recalls retired Indiana legislator Hurley Goodall, a Democrat who served with Burton until 1983, when Burton left for Washington. "Then, when he ran for reelection and they had a picture of his family in the paper, everybody wanted to puke." One woman, a former staff attorney for the Indiana legislature, recalls being with Burton one day after hours: "He put his hand on the back of my neck and said, 'Would your husband, your boyfriend, be upset about you being here late with me tonight?'" Just then, she says, a male staffer appeared-- "bless his heart," the woman added.

A man who worked for the GOP in the state legislature says Burton propositioned his daughter when she was a secretary there. "She was very upset," the man recalls. "I said to him, 'Dan, I would appreciate it if nothing more like that happened.'"

Virginia Blankenbaker, a former Republican state senator (Burton attended a fund-raiser for her recent, unsuccessful bid for a neighboring congressional seat), says that her late husband, who was director of public safety for Indianapolis, told her of numerous Burton problems, and she recalls one of her own. "One of my interns-- I don't remember if she also worked for him -- was flattered when he invited her to dinner at the end of the session in 1981 or 1982, and then was most embarrassed when he propositioned her," she remembers. "It's bizarre he's so outspoken on moral issues." The former intern, Judith Murden, now a federal employee, would confirm only that Burton had commented on her appearance, suggesting that she had rebuffed an advance, and noting that "nothing goes anywhere if there is a red light."

Other Hoosier women seethe with anger over Burton's hypocrisy. "I know wise men who in political life have had affairs," says Beth Green, a retired civil servant for the Indiana legislature who knew Burton. "There are many whom I think handle those relationships with respect. Perhaps there are mutual benefits. And, yeah, it's OK what they do. But I do care when they're up there preaching family values. My feeling is that [Burton] is not sincere about anything."

One woman who worked for an Indiana government agency and saw Burton frequently at political events remembers that when she was in her early 20s Burton came on to her in a "friendly" way by inviting her for a drink. They did not have a relationship, only a "one-night stand ... at my place," because "I suspect that he was worried that I was going to say something to somebody else in politics, and I didn't," she recalled. "It has been a source of both irritation and amusement to me over the years to hear him campaign and tout himself as having such strong family values and being such a defender of the conservative point of view, because I think, 'This is so much bullshit. What a hypocrite!' Even though I am a registered Republican and have been all my life and have worked both formally and informally on political campaigns, my favorite candidate is whoever is running against him."

In 1983 Burton put an Indianapolis woman, Rebecca Hyatt, on his Washington congressional staff as "assistant to the administrative assistant." Hyatt, according to a former boyfriend, James Rutledge, said that Burton had pressured her into an affair when she baby-sat for the family. "She said, 'I've got a problem at work. Dan wants me to have sex with him. He keeps bugging me every day,'" recalled Rutledge, who dated Hyatt in the early 1980s. After she and Burton began an affair, Rutledge said, "He took her up there [to Washington]. He promised her a job, everything." Hyatt's ex-husband, Byron Hyatt, says she told him of the affair with her boss. When contacted recently, Rebecca Hyatt, who left Burton's staff in the mid-1980s, said, "I don't talk to reporters."

Still an extreme right-wing loon, since the publication of Russ Baker's story, Burton has toned down the show considerably and does his best to stay off everyone's radar. He's happy embezzling what he can out of his nifty congressional job and keeping his philandering private... without casting stones at anyone else. I hope whomever is investigating closet queen and homophobic fanatic Trent Franks (R-AZ) will be as successful with him as Russ was with Burton.