Rep. Mary Bono (R) Elected April 1998, 3d term
Born:	Oct. 24, 1961, Cleveland, OH
Home:	Palm Springs
Education:	U. of S. CA, B.F.A. 1984
Religion:	Protestant
Marital Status:	married (Glenn Baxley)
Professional Career:	Gen. Mgr., Bono restaurant, 1986-90.
Additional Info
Recent Articles · Offices · Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results District Demographics
More On California
At A Glance · State Profile District Map Redistricting · Almanac Home

From the air two decades ago, a night flight east from Los Angeles showed the lights of 10 million persons' streets and houses and then almost perfect darkness: a vast metropolis surrounded by almost uninhabited territory. Today the sprinkled pattern of white lights has spread into the Inland Empire around Riverside and San Bernardino and is multiplying outward into the desert. The Inland Empire has filled up with instant towns like family-oriented Moreno Valley, which did not exist in 1980 and had 142,000 people in 2000. Over the 10,000-foot San Jacinto Mountains, desert communities have boomed: Palm Springs, once the lone winter resort for the stars, is now one of a string of communities along Highway 111 and Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope Drives. Among rich retirees, the vogue for the coast lessened as beach cities filled up with roller bladers and rent control crusaders; the clean, dry, roomy desert, where the days are almost always crystal clear and the sky usually blue and cloudless, became more attractive, and, with everything air-conditioned, a comfortable year-round home. The population is about 240,000 for the entire corridor if you count Indio and Coachella, the heavily Latino cities in the agricultural Coachella Valley, which has 75% of the country's date palms and features camel races at its annual date festival. Two presidents retired to the desert here: Dwight Eisenhower in Palm Desert for the winters and Gerald Ford in nearby Rancho Mirage.

The 45th Congressional District covers almost all the desert in Riverside County from Blythe on the Nevada border to Palm Springs. But about half its population lives west of the 10,000 foot peak that looms above Palm Springs, in fast-growing Moreno Valley and Murrieta and in the old town of Hemet surrounded by surreal landscape. This area tends to vote Republican, but not by large margins; George W. Bush won 51% of the vote here in 2000.

The congresswoman from the 45th District is Mary Bono, who won the seat in April 1998 after the death by her husband Sonny Bono, onetime showbiz celebrity and mayor of Palm Springs. He was on a family vacation when he died in a skiing accident in South Lake Tahoe, California. Mary Bono was strongly encouraged to run for the seat by House Republican leaders who believed that only she could avert a divisive Republican primary and that she had the best chance to hold the seat. She grew up as Mary Whitaker in South Pasadena, where she was an accomplished gymnast; she remains a fitness buff, a certified personal fitness instructor who has studied karate and Tae Kwan Do. They met when she was celebrating her college graduation at his Los Angeles restaurant in 1984; they were married two years later. Before her campaign, she had no political experience and was little known in Washington. In the special election, she faced actor Ralph Waite, best known as "Pa" Walton in The Waltons. Waite was hurt during the brief campaign because he kept a commitment to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman six times a week in a New Jersey theater. The campaign's biggest controversy came when Sonny's 83-year-old mother said that her son would have opposed Mary's candidacy, preferring that she care for their children. But it was no contest. Bono won 64%-29%, a bigger margin than Sonny's two victories.

Bono has a moderate voting record, especially on social and foreign issues; the least conservative voting record of California Republicans. Her initial legislative priority was passage of Sonny's bill to restore the Salton Sea, an artificial body of water in the desert created when a canal burst in 1905; it has been shrinking in recent decades, increasing the salinity of the water and the pollution from agricultural runoff. Although some Democrats objected to taking funds from other California projects, Mary Bono secured $13.4 million for what became the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. As the only female Republican on the Judiciary Committee and the panel's most junior member, this non-lawyer played a visible role in the impeachment inquiry. Newsweek said, "Bono was citizen Jane--the everywoman in a room of blowhards." She voted for impeachment. In 2001 she won a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, where she worked on a bill to require companies to expense their employee stock options. To the 2002 farm bill she added a provision requiring that imported fruits and vegetables must have country-of-origin labels. She won $14.2 million for the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, a tribe that lost much of its land after the Salton Sea flooded much of its reservation; the tribe also got 11,000 acres in the desert plus prime location for a casino.

Bono has been easily reelected. In 2002 she won 65%-33% against a Democrat who spent $312,000. She has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Barbara Boxer's Senate seat in 2004. There would be a certain piquancy to that: Sonny Bono ran for the seat in 1992, and finished third in the Republican primary. But in mid-2003 there were no signs she was interested in running.

Recent News Coverage
Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, National Journal and Technology Daily archives using the form below:

DC Office
404 CHOB 20515, 202-225-5330; Fax: 202-225-2961; Web site: www.house.gov/bono

State Offices
Hemet, 909-658-2312; Palm Springs, 760-320-1076.

Committees

• Energy & Commerce (24th of 31 R): Commerce, Trade & Consumer Protection; Energy & Air Quality; Environment & Hazardous Materials; Telecommunications & the Internet.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	10	27	0	25	8	100	48	95	71	78	75
2001	15	--	0	0	--	--	63	100	68	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	7%	--	89%		39%	--	61%
Social	49%	--	51%		49%	--	51%
Foreign	49%	--	47%		41%	--	56%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Ban ANWR Development N 5. Faith-Based Charities Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority Y 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Mary Bono (R)	87,101	65%	$582,769
	Elle Kurpiewski (D)	43,692	33%	$312,387
	Other	2,740	2%
2002 primary	Mary Bono (R)	unopposed
2000 general	Mary Bono (R)	123,738	59%	$582,684
	Ron Oden (D)	79,302	38%	$124,866
	Other	6,147	3%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (60%); 1998 (64%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	93,802	51%
	Gore (D)	85,427	47%
	Other	4,029	2%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Forty-Fifth District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R + 3
• District Size: 6,062 square miles
• Population in 2000: 639,088; 89.9% urban; 10.1% rural
• Median Household Income: $40,468; 15.0% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 23.1% blue collar; 53.2% white collar; 23.7% gray collar; 14.5% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 50.1% White, 6.3% Black, 2.8% Asian, 0.6% Amer. Indian, 0.2% Hawaiian, 1.9% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 38.0% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 8.9% German, 7.1% English, 6.6% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.