The Maynard Institute web site

“I Am Biracial, That’s Right.”

February 11, 2009

     Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, left, and Hillary Clinton
spokesman Phil Singer at White House Correspondents Dinner last April.
Some are surprised to learn of Burton’s racial background.  (Credit: CNN)

Some Surprised by Background of Deputy Press Aide

When a list of members of the White House press office appeared to show that no African American professionals worked there, a press assistant fielded a call asking if that were indeed the case. She said yes, not realizing that one of her own bosses, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, has a black father and white mother.

“I am biracial, that’s right,” Burton, 31, told Journal-isms on Tuesday. “Though I find it interesting that you ask only if I ‘consider’ myself biracial and not if I am.”

Burton’s ethnicity, a surprise to many who have worked with or covered him through the long Obama campaign and into the White House, has surfaced only sporadically as a subject in a meteoric career that includes service as communications director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., for that of John Kerry, also in 2004, as national press secretary for Sen. Barack Obama, and now as deputy White House press secretary. His race is usually ignored.

“I had NO idea and I used to see him everyday,” one African American Obama campaign worker said. “I’m as good as any of us in ‘detecting’ the mixed among us and I had no clue. He looks totally white!”

The same White House press assistant assured a caller last week that Burton was not African American and said she was sure because she had known him for some time.

Burton’s ethnicity became a subject of more than idle curiosity after Press Secretary Robert Gibbs released a list last week of the press-office staff, as this column reported then.

Even accounting for Burton, some were concerned. “I got an e-mail Tuesday listing all of the various press folks and contact information, and hardly any African-Americans or Hispanics were listed,” commentator Roland Martin said on CNN. “Granted, the deputy press secretary is African-American and the director of broadcast media is Hispanic. That’s not sufficient.

“Unfortunately, this shouldn’t come as a shock, because the campaign press staff of then-Sen. Barack Obama was just as weak on diversity.”

Martin repeated his position in his Creators Syndicate newspaper column.

He noted that staff members often rise to the key posts of press secretaries for entire departments and for the White House itself, and that Obama had articulated a commitment to diversity. White House staffers also decide which reporters are admitted to news conferences and which are called upon. Though there continues to be outreach to journalists of color in other venues – Obama gave an interview just this week to Black Enterprise magazine – it took six post-election news conferences before a black or Hispanic reporter had access to the microphone for questions.

It should be noted that the White House press office is not the only part of its communications team, and that aides assigned specifically to the “specialty media” – black and Latino news outlets, for example – are assigned to the “media relations” office.

Corey A. Ealons, who deals with African American media, told Journal-isms, “I continue to make the point that this is one operation with a wealth of diversity in its makeup” as it attempts to put forward Obama’s message.

As deputy press secretary, Burton is one of the key shapers of that message. Some will remember him on the campaign trail doing battle with Fox News’ Meghan Kelly after Fox played up comments that Obama had a “socialist” message, or perhaps when he announced that the Obamas had indeed left the Chicago church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to a 2008 story by Tom Buckham in Burton’s hometown Buffalo News, “Burton traces his political awakening to the times his father, Troy, who was active in the machinists union at the since-closed Pohlman Foundry Co. on the East Side, took him along to Buffalo School Board meetings.

“The two ‘always talked about politics,’ but attending those sessions ‘took it from theoretical to actionable,’ he said.

“The political bug bit in earnest after his time at the University of Minnesota, where he majored in English, Burton said. To earn money for school, he worked in community relations at Minneapolis headquarters of what is now Target Corp. . . .

“There, he came to the attention of Rep. Bill Luther, D-Minn., who hired him right after graduation.

“Burton arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1999 as one of the youngest press secretaries, if not the youngest, on Capitol Hill.

Troy Burton now lives in Niles, Ohio, and Bill Burton’s Polish-American mother, Deborah Ballard, still lives in Buffalo.

In 2007, Burton married Laura Capps, who worked in the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency and was Kerry’s press secretary in Iowa in 2003. Burton was her counterpart in the Gephardt campaign.

“It will be a long-distance marriage,” the Times wrote then. “For how long? ‘Until we move into the White House,’ Mr. Burton said.”