When people say Senate President Pro Tem John Burton is the second most powerful person at the Capitol, this is what they mean:
Gov. Gray Davis had urged Democratic legislators to take action by June 1 to cancel a scheduled $28 monthly aid increase for 1.2 million poor Californians who are elderly, blind and disabled.

Davis didn't relish trimming the Supplemental Security Income program, but the Democratic governor's proposal would have saved taxpayers $324 million. Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Culver City, quickly got Democrats in his caucus to acquiesce, and the administration was halfway there.

It didn't matter.

Burton, a 70-year-old San Francisco Democrat whose volcanic outbursts and expletive-laced verbal assaults are as common around the Capitol as touring schoolchildren, made sure nothing happened in the Senate.

He sent the bill to the Rules Committee, which he controls. He held no hearing. He allowed no debate.

The June 1 deadline came and went, and the SSI cost-of-living increase Davis said California couldn't afford took effect.

"John used his raw political power to get it done," said Sen. Deirdre Alpert, D-Coronado, who was mentored by Burton when she came to the Legislature in 1990. "I don't think many people knew about it. It was pure brinksmanship, and no one blinked."

Or, as Burton explained in an interview, "There ain't enough poor people to (expletive deleted) fix the whole (expletive deleted) problem anyway."

Burton's storied 39-year career in politics is full of such victories. When his state legislative career ends next year because of term limits, he will have survived drug and alcohol addiction, emerged from the shadow of his legendary brother and ascended to a leadership position for which few believed he was suited.

But he is spending his final months at the Capitol mired in what he calls his "worst nightmare," a record budget deficit sure to hurt the poor. He is sharing the nightmare with a wounded governor he has known for three decades, but never warmed to.

"He is how he is and I am how I am," Burton said. "We're (expletive) different. We have a different world view. That's his phrase, whatever that is. I don't know what world view is. He thinks it's flat. I think it's round."

It was almost three years ago when, during the height of the state's energy crisis, the always restless Burton fidgeted through a long meeting in the governor's office and heard former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher gently lecture Davis about how elected officials must lead in times of crisis -- even when all their apparent choices are unpopular.

Burton stood up, fished a dollar bill out of his pocket and crunched it into a wad before hurling it across the table at Davis.

"I guess the buck stops here, governor," Burton said and waltzed out, leaving behind a roomful of dumbstruck officials.

"It seemed to just call for something," Burton, with only a slight grin on his face, explained in a recent interview. "It was no big deal."

Davis declined to be interviewed but said through a spokeswoman, "John Burton can be irascible, but he has a giant heart and wants to do the right thing."

For someone once said to be living and working in the shadow of his late older brother, the powerful California congressman Philip Burton, John Burton -- without question The Man to See If You Want Something Done Or Not Done at the State Capitol -- is very much his own man.

In an age of political correctness that makes California legislators loath to offend anyone unless they absolutely must, Burton described himself dead-on 10 years ago when then-Assemblywoman Martha Escutia, D-Whittier, now a senator, asked colleagues to sign a book someone had given her. She wanted each of them to include the one word that best described who they were.

Escutia pulled the book out for a visitor to her Capitol office and pointed to Burton's choice. "Rare," was the word scrawled next to his name.

It's as true today as it was in 1956, when Burton first walked San Francisco precincts for his older brother.

"I consider John's role to be the conscience of the Democratic Party," Escutia said. "The man is still a die-hard Democrat with a capital D, and he's not ashamed of it. It's too bad there are not more like him around."

If there were, Burton and Democrats would probably have enough votes to pass a budget he'd prefer to see balanced without cutting social programs and by raising taxes on the wealthy.

He fits the wealthy category himself, since he's made a healthy living as a lawyer. He has had a number of corporate and developer clients who appreciate his clout on matters, mostly in San Francisco, that he argues aren't related to state business.

"I know he's frustrated," Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga said of Burton's inability to push a tax increase through the Senate to help close the state's $38.2 billion budget shortfall.

"John is a passionate liberal who likes to spend the taxpayers' money. That's John. He cares a great deal about the constituents behind those programs."

Even in the bad budget years like this one, Burton thrives on the incessant wheeling and dealing of the Capitol.

He knows, however, that saving the SSI cost-of-living increase was only a small victory. As he and Brulte negotiated last week, it appeared increasingly likely that deep cuts would have to be made in some of the very programs Burton has tried to spare.

Republicans, who consider him a classic tax-and-spend liberal whose politics helped get the state into its current financial mess, aren't budging on their refusal to vote for tax increases.

"They always want to (expletive deleted) with the ones who can't fight back," Burton said.

On summer afternoons, when he's not presiding over the Senate or in some meeting at the Capitol, Burton often can be seen at an outdoor coffee shop, catching a little sun and eating a frozen yogurt.

He barks constantly into his cell phone, throwing out off-color barbs at reporters, lobbyists, administration officials, aides and other legislators who happen by.

A notorious flirt who's twice divorced, Burton has one child: Kimiko Burton, a San Francisco lawyer who ran unsuccessfully last year for public defender. Burton helped her raise more than $1 million for an office that usually attracts little attention and meager campaign cash. Some election watchers said his daughter lost in large part because voters resented his meddling.

"He's been criticized for special-interest money this and special-interest money that," said Kimiko Burton, "yet he's the guy who says we're not taking money from the blind and the poor. I don't think anyone can say he's not true to his beliefs and true to what people need."

When he's able, Burton tries to be home by 7 p.m. so he can hide out in his just south-of-the-Capitol apartment and watch old black-and-white movies or reruns of "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," starring "Seinfeld" creator Larry David.

He'd just as soon spend 10 minutes running through the plot of one of those irreverent comedies or talking about old jazz tunes as he would public policy minutia. He's no detail guy. Though he knows what's in his bills, he leaves the fine points to his staff.

Burton legislates largely by gut instinct, preferring to trust a well-honed sense of right and wrong that he says he learned from his years as a "working stiff" toiling in less visible jobs.

"I think what helped me more than anything else," he said, "was my life as a bartender and shining shoes."

"You can tell how people are by the way they put their money on the bar, the way they take it off the bar," he said. "Whether they leave it on the bar or put it in their pocket. ... It's all human nature."

But Burton, who isn't certain what he'll do when his Senate term expires at the end of 2004, allows of his life as a legislator: "I suppose I'd miss it. It kills the day."

Burton was first elected to the California Assembly in 1964, filling his brother's old seat when Philip went to Congress. Ten years later, running at his brother's insistence in a staunchly Democratic district mapped out by Philip Burton during reapportionment, John went to Washington to serve in the House of Representatives.

He never liked living there. Along the way, his second marriage fell apart, and he became addicted to cocaine and nitrous oxide. He started smoking marijuana while growing up on the streets of the city. When then-Mayor George Moscone, his best friend, was assassinated in 1978, Burton said he unwittingly used it as an excuse to truly lose himself.

In 1982, he walked away from his safe congressional seat and checked into a drug rehabilitation program in Arizona. His old friend, former Georgia congressman Dawson Mathis, said John called him to his office one day, calmly laid out his last lines of cocaine, snorted them up his nose and said: "I need some help."

He got himself clean and stayed out of politics for five years. At the urging of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, his pal since the two met in 1951 while standing in line for ROTC at San Francisco State, he successfully ran for his old Assembly seat in 1988.

Burton was elected to the Senate in 1996. Two years later, much to the amazement of many who said he lacked the discipline or organizational skills to be a legislative leader, he was picked by his peers to be Senate president. He's not the type to admit it, but there were tears in Burton's eyes when he got the job.

"I believe the success he has in his current position is one of the most remarkable personal and political comebacks in the history of this country," Mathis gushed. "There are a lot of us who served with John back in Washington who never thought we'd see him become a moderating influence on a legislative body."

Whether or not he is a moderating influence is subject to debate.

In recent months, because he said he was "offended as hell" by posters that have gone up in San Francisco that suggest homeless people asking for money often use it to buy drugs and alcohol, Burton fought back in his unique way. He took about $10,000 out of his campaign funds and put up his own signs all over town.

They say things like: "Jesus gave money to poor people on the streets of Galilee," or "I gave money to a woman in the streets, and she fed her children."

"It makes me feel good," he said while uttering his favorite expletive to illustrate how he feels about those who bash the downtrodden. "It ain't a crime or a sin to be poor."

Every Christmas season Burton rounds up volunteers from the Delancey Street Foundation, which helps recovering drug addicts and ex-convicts put their lives back together, and gives homeless people coats and blankets that he bought himself or cajoled others to donate.

"He's the classic outwardly gruff politician who is a curmudgeon on the outside and a mush ball on the inside," said Mimi Silbert, Delancey's president and co-founder. "And because he's such a mush ball on the inside, he makes sure the outside is gruffer than anyone around."

Burton can be so brutal to his own staff, cussing them out and questioning where they left their brains, that some have left or taken to communicating with him only by e-mail. He doesn't save his tirades for private sessions with the door closed.

He'll swear and yell so nastily at trusted budget aide Diane Cummins or legislative assistant Bob Giroux that those who don't know the relationship they have with their boss will cringe at the exchanges. The two aides say they've heard so many Burton harangues over time that they don't take them personally.

Burton, who occasionally apologizes after he explodes, said he's not proud of losing his temper.

"It's not good, and who likes to be yelled at?" he said. "With me, it's more a matter of frustration than anger."

Labor, gays and other traditional liberal Democratic constituencies consider Burton their rock at the Capitol. But that isn't necessarily true back in his home San Francisco district.

"Locally, he's seen as kind of an old-line machine politician that curries favor from lobbyists and big monied interests," said David Binder, a San Francisco pollster who is a big Burton fan.

Burton agrees, and utters another expletive when he talks about San Francisco liberals who don't appreciate him.

Then, a minute later, he offers what makes even this year of missed budgets and gargantuan deficits still satisfying.

"If I don't have this job, I don't know if 1.2 million people are going to get that extra $28 a month," he said. "What will sustain me through all this is the 28 bucks."