Sala Galant Burton, the widow of Rep. Philip Burton, won Tuesday the Congressional seat in San Francisco left vacant by the death of her husband last April. Mrs. Burton was born to a Jewish family in Poland and came to the United States with her family in 1939.
The 57-year-old Mrs. Burton will bring the number of Jews in the House to 31. She will increase the number of Jewish women in the House to three, all from California. The others are her fellow San Francisco Democrat, Barbara Boxer and Bobbi Fiedler, a Republican from the Los Angeles area. There are eight Jews in the Senate.
Mrs. Burton received 55 percent of the vote, nearly twice that of her nearest opponent, Duncan Howard, a Republican, who received 22.4 percent of the votes. There were nine other candidates in the campaign.
Mrs. Burton suspended campaigning last Friday when her 94-year-old father died. Dressed in black last night, she did not participate in the victory celebration.
Her husband, who served 18 years in Congress, was one of the leaders of the Democratic majority there and a close supporter of Israel and of liberal and environmental causes. She worked closely with her husband and campaigned on her knowledge of the Washington political scene.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
