Sen. Roland Burris' image may be hard to recover after taped conversation released

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Roland Burris again finds himself denying any role in a pay-to-play scheme as newly revealed wiretaps show him begging for his Senate seat and offering to donate to former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's campaign.

Burris said he did nothing wrong, telling reporters Wednesday that his taped conversation with Blagojevich's brother, Robert, was the result of a misunderstanding. He said he was trying to placate the governor's brother because he wanted to win a Senate appointment.

Political observers say Burris' justifications aside, there's likely to be no recovery for his image.

"If anything, the tapes confirm the position he was in," said David Bositis, senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

"Nothing Burris did or does was going to change his prospects," Bositis said. "Even if he kept his nose to the grindstone and worked hard and so forth, that wasn't going to make a difference."

On the tapes, Burris is heard asking Blagojevich's brother to tell the governor that he would like to be appointed to the Senate seat vacated by President Obama. Burris then notes that it would look bad for him to raise money directly for Rod Blagojevich, so he promises to personally write the governor a check and take other actions to help the campaign.

"OK, OK, well we, we, I, I will personally do something, OK," Burris says.

The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating Burris, as is a state attorney in Illinois. When asked how the scandal back home has affected him, Burris made a sweeping gesture with his hands.

"We've done some very serious and meaningful work," Burris said. "I've been a part of all that energy here, all that's helping people. And that's what I seek to do."

Burris casts himself as a team player, a loyal Democrat. He says Senate minutiae enthralls him, and the briefing books that crowd his bedside table offer him a kind of peace. He ticks off key votes and points out that without him, Democrats would have one less Senate vote -- and might not have enjoyed the successes they've highlighting after Obama's first few months.

"There's a lot to learn, and that's good -- that's what I want," Burris said. "I am here to work. I am here to learn."

Burris doesn't have any close friends in the Senate, though he says he chats with every member he bumps into. Most conspicuous is his lack of a relationship with his Illinois colleague, Richard Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat. Durbin routinely takes new senators under his wing, but he has never been supportive of Burris' Senate aspirations -- he told Burris it would be a bad idea to accept his appointment in the first place.

"As far as the relationship goes, I wouldn't say it's a bad one," said Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker. "It's just not a very deep one."

Durbin switched from tepid acceptance to calling for Burris' resignation after Burris revealed that he had tried, and failed, to raise money for Blagojevich.

Despite the questions from the tapes, Burris went ahead with plans to tour downstate Illinois. At a stop in Champaign, Ill., he looked like a typical politician walking into a Small Business Administration seminar at a hotel on the University of Illinois campus.

The hotel's developer, Peter Fox, warmly shook Burris' hand as he told him, "We're lucky to have you here."

"Roland was always so gracious," Fox, past head of the state's Economic Development Commission, said afterward. "He's just always been a friend of mine."

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Associated Press writer David Mercer in Champaign, Ill., contributed to this report.