Obama's victory? Burris credits Martin Luther King and himself

Gov. Blagojevich compared himself to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. But he’s not the only Illinois official stretching to elevate himself to high stature.

Speaking this morning at a Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast, the state’s new junior U.S. senator, Roland Burris said that without Burris’ own trailblazing, Barack Obama never would have been elected president.

“If there was no Martin Luther King Jr. and no Roland Burris, there would be no Barack Obama in the White House today,” Burris said to cheers at a Rainbow PUSH Coalition breakfast in Chicago. “We must recognize, friends, that we all stand on each other's shoulders.”

Burris had left elective office in Illinois before Obama was ever elected, though they did know each other. Burris was never a major presence in Obama’s campaigns for state or U.S. senate or for the presidency. When Blagojevich appointed Burris senator, Obama said Burris should decline the appointment, though Obama said he had respect for Burris. Like other Democratic leaders, Obama ultimately relented and said he looked forward to working with Burris.

“We must lift each other up,” Burris told the Rainbow PUSH gathering in Chicago today. “We must set an example for our young black children and the other children in our country. We must take care of young black males. There’s no reason why they should be committing all these crimes across the country. There’s no reason why they should be 40 or 50 percent of the prison population.”

At that breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel, other prominent Democrats — Sen. Dick Durbin, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn and Attorney General Lisa Madigan — all called on Blagojevich to come back from his publicity tour in New York to attend his impeachment trial starting today in Springfield.

But not Burris. “The governor has to make his own decisions,” Burris said. “I cannot make a decision for the governor. I don’t have an opinion on that. Those decisions are his decisions. I cannot question his decisions. Until he is convicted by the Senate, he is innocent until he is proven guilty. I cannot second-guess his thoughts. That is not in my purview to try to seek out and get involved in that situation. I am not siding with him — I am saying the system has to work itself out.”

Asked about the governor comparing himself to King, Gandhi and Mandela, Burris laughed and said, “Those are the governor’s comments. I don’t have any comment on that.”

Madigan said that the governor’s budget office was refusing to give Quinn’s office information he needs to start drafting a budget.

“The lieutenant governor, at this point, apparently doesn’t have access to the people that he needs, who work in the budget office, to get the info he needs to prepare himself to put together to prepare a state budget,” Madigan said. “A lot of the information is controlled by the agencies that are under the governor, and obviously the governor is not cooperating, really, with anybody.”

Quinn said he had spoken with the budget director over the weekend and expects more cooperation soon.

"Every African American leader and public official in this country's history helped pave the way for the election of the first African American President," Jason Erkes, Burris' strategist, said.