Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.), is interviewed in his Capitol Hill office. Will Burris budge on public option?

Could Roland Burris become the next Olympia Snowe?

In the nine months since he arrived in Washington, Burris has been best known as the guy former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed to the Senate.


But that’s about to change.

Burris has staked out a position on the public option that puts him at odds with Democratic leaders and the vast majority of the Democratic Caucus — and that could give the all-but-ignored junior senator from Illinois the sort of swing-vote status usually reserved for Snowe and other Republican moderates.

Last week, Burris told reporters that he would “absolutely” stand in the way of any Democratic proposal that lacked a sweeping public health insurance option. And on Monday, a source familiar with Burris’s thinking said that an “opt-out” plan like the one Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is pushing so far has fallen short of what Burris is willing to support.

The questions facing Democratic leaders: How far will Burris go? And how far will they go to keep him in the fold?

Burris made it clear last week that he wasn’t committing to support a Republican filibuster of a Democratic bill, even one he finds lacking; he wasn’t about to begin “telegraphing my moves on the procedural matters,” he said during a C-SPAN appearance.

But, he added: “I have stated it unequivocally that if the final package does not carry with it the strong public option that would allow individuals to have competition and to acquire health insurance that they cannot acquire or afford in the public sector, then I will not vote for that legislation. That’s what my position is because that’s where my constituents are.”

Of course, Burris’s constituents are also the constituents of Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate Democrats’ chief vote counter, who urged Burris to resign in February when it appeared that he had given less-than-straightforward responses under oath about his contacts with Blagojevich’s associates prior to his appointment to President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. Blagojevich was indicted in the spring on federal charges that he tried to profit from the appointment, but Burris was not implicated by the indictment.

Durbin told POLITICO that he didn’t think his rocky past with Burris would stand in the way of their striking a deal, saying: “I think we can talk it over.”

“Of course, we need 60 votes, so we need Sen. Burris’s vote,” said Durbin, who supports the public option but is open to compromise.

On Monday, Durbin told reporters that some liberals in the Democratic Caucus “may disagree,” but said there’s a “positive feeling about this.”

Asked about Burris’s feelings, Durbin said Monday he hadn’t asked.

“I think you ought to ask him that question,” Durbin said with a smile.



But as Reid worked the phones during the past few days, a person familiar with the situation said he didn’t speak with Burris — and the White House also has yet to invite Burris to an Oval Office meeting with Obama, despite the fact that the president has already met individually with many other wavering senators. A spokesman for Reid said the majority leader would reach out to Burris.

Reid said asking the White House to pressure senators “hasn’t been necessary to this point,” and Durbin said the Democrats have yet to fully engage in whipping their members — suggesting that the full onslaught of pressure on wavering Democratic senators is yet to come.

Jim O’Connor, Burris’s spokesman, said his boss is “willing to look at” other public options — but reiterated the senator’s concerns that some of the compromises “do not hold insurance companies accountable.”

“I’m not supporting any other program where all these conditions are on it,” Burris told reporters last week. “We need competition, we need costs down — that’s the only thing I can see myself voting for. No trigger — no anything.”

Although Illinois prosecutors did not file charges against him, Burris hasn’t been interviewed by investigators for the Senate Ethics Committee, which one person familiar with the matter said was a sign that the ethics investigation is still ongoing. The controversy over Burris’s appointment has been expensive; his campaign committee’s debt stands at $139,039, much of the money owed to consultants who helped him handle his involvement in the Blagojevich mess, according to his latest fundraising report.

During the past several weeks, Burris has used the health care debate as a way to define himself differently. He has thundered his views on the floor and in interviews, and he said he was the first Democratic senator to insist he’d oppose a bill without a robust public option. He added on C-SPAN that either the trigger plan or the opt-out provision represents a “watered-down public option” and a “weakening position” that will allow insurance companies to get around the tough rules of a nationally run plan.

Dick Simpson, professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predicted that if Burris’s tough rhetoric matches results in the final bill, he’ll leave behind a “much better legacy.”

“He’s mostly been a team player, and he hasn’t used his authority in the past to block things,” Simpson said.

And Reid knows full well the power of any individual senator but thinks his caucus is close to coming together behind the plan.

“We have 60 people in the caucus,” Reid said Monday. “It’s a comfort level. ... We all hug together and see where we come out.”