Burris: I can overcome Blago taint

Roland Burris believes he’ll be able to overcome the taint of being selected by scandal-bogged Gov. Rod Blagojevich and can restore the public’s trust in government, according to a fellow contender for President-elect Obama’s Illinois Senate seat.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), who’d sought, then eschewed, Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointment to the seat, also provided a rare voice of support for Burris.

{mosads}“Roland is a good choice,” Davis said in a telephone interview. “Roland Burris has an impeccable record of public service. Some people would say he’s about as clean as a hound’s tooth.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), however, said they would seek to block Burris’s appointment. They had already said they would not accept an appointment from Blagojevich, who is charged with trying to sell Obama’s seat to the highest bidder.

Davis said he ran into Burris at a Christmas party in Chicago Saturday night where they discussed the “pros and cons” of accepting Blagojevich’s appointment.

“He expressed confidence in his ability to have the trust of people to the extent that he could not only do a good job, but that he also could help restore trust,” Davis said.

“He sort of indicated that with all his years of statewide service, a lot of people knew Roland Burris, and knew what Roland Burris stood for, and knew that he had a record of working with all different kinds of people,” Davis said.

Burris is the former comptroller and attorney general of Illinois. If seated, he would be the third African-American senator from Illinois, and would replace Obama as the Senate’s only black senator.

Davis said that he’d given up seeking the appointment several weeks ago because the taint of being selected by the governor would be too difficult to overcome.

“I knew how much time one would need to spend defending the decision. I didn’t want to spend so much of my time dealing with that,” Davis said.

“He had a slightly different perspective,” Davis continued. “He was willing to go through it. I was not.”

Davis, who supported Burris for governor in 2002, praised Burris’s record and was careful not to disparage Blagojevich.

“He’s solid. He’s well-equipped. He’s been a statewide elected official for 20 years,” Davis said.

He didn’t take a firm position on whether the Senate should seat Burris, but said senators should take into consideration Burris’s record, not just the charges against Blagojevich.

“Are you looking at the nominee or the nominator, who quite frankly has not been convicted of anything?” Davis said.

Davis was a co-chairman of Burris’s 2002 campaign for governor, along with Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.). News reports at the time indicated that Obama, then a state senator, attended Burris’s campaign kickoff.