The bill is about to come due on Roland W. Burris’s short stint as a United States senator, and close friends and advisers say that the debt he has racked up in legal bills and other expenses is taking a toll on him personally.
When Senator Burris, a former Illinois state comptroller, leaves office in a few months, he will come home with at least $649,115 in debts related to his being named to the post by former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, according to federal financial disclosure filings.
The bulk of the debt stems from the cumbersome legal battle Mr. Burris had to wage to be seated. Perjury charges were filed against him after his testimony before the Illinois House committee that was ruling on Mr. Blagojevich’s impeachment; and Jesse White, the Illinois secretary of state, refused to certify the appointment. Mr. Burris eventually assumed office on Jan. 15, 2009, and was cleared of the perjury charges.
In his most recent quarterly filings in June, Mr. Burris said he had received only $31,500 in donations for his legal fund, which is being overseen by Roderick Sawyer, an aldermanic candidate for the Sixth Ward.
In a statement to the Chicago News Cooperative, Mr. Burris acknowledged that he had a “steep climb,” but vowed to raise “the necessary funds to retire this debt in full.”
Timothy Wright, Mr. Burris’s Chicago-based lawyer, said the senator had promised to pay him in full, but added that he was open to an alternative solution.
“I think at some point, if we can sit back and he and I can handle it, we’ll see if we can negotiate something out,” Mr. Wright said.
Friends and confidants of Mr. Burris, some of whom are creditors, question whether he was fully prepared for the financial burden when he accepted the appointment.
“It’s affected him like nothing else I’ve ever seen,” said Fred Lebed, a Chicago Democratic consultant who is both a longtime friend of Burris and his former partner in a consulting business. “He’s obsessed with it.”
Jason Erkes, a Chicago media adviser and marketing executive who has also been an adviser to Mr. Burris, said: “Every conversation I have had with him he has talked about the debt. I know it bothers him; I know it definitely is a tension and stress that is on his mind all the time. But when you get to the Senate with such controversy, and especially when your term is cut short, there really is an inability to fundraise.”
Mr. Burris’s press secretary, Jim O’Connor, disputed the characterization of the senator as obsessed with his debt, saying he was mindful of it, but “not upset.”
Mr. Burris received more bad news this week: the United States Supreme Court decided not to block the Nov. 2 special election to fill the Senate seat of President Obama, which Mr. Burris has occupied since January 2009.
Mr. Burris had hoped the court would allow him to put his name on the ballot so he could have a chance to spend a few more months in the Senate. Instead, he will be forced to leave this fall.
I feel really bad for this clown. May he find solace in the extra inscription on his tombstone, that this parody of democratic process enabled him to snatch.
We, the citizens of Illinois, appointed him – and we should be paying the bills, not him personally.
We may have disagreed with the person who appointed him, we may even have disagreed with his appointment but that doesn’t change the fact that he WAS appointed.
Like it or not, if WE did that WE should pay for it.
Part of the whole political process should involve an acknowledgement that shame needs to be a part of politics, because we are choosing “representatives of the people”. So because the Honorable Roland Burris chose not to withdraw his name after he was named by Blagojevich, after Blago was indicted, and do the right thing to avert stigma for the office, the state, the party, and him personally, does not mean that we, the voters, should either feel compassion, or any obligation to provide financial benefit to him. We needed an effective transitional senator – Burris knew he could not provide that role due to the Blagojevich connection – he chose to stay anyways for the sole purpose of ego and personal gain. The irony of this whole thing is that, if he had turned down the appointment, that would have been the best political move he could have made for his own future. Short sightedness rarely benefits in politics, the person or the office.