Rep. Mary Bono (R) Elected April 1998, 4th full 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.
DC Office	405 CHOB20515, 202-225-5330; Fax: 202-225-2961; Web site: www.house.gov/bono
State Offices	Hemet, 909-658-2312; Palm Springs, 760-320-1076.
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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 157,000 people in 2004. Over the 10,000-foot San Jacinto Mountains, desert communities have boomed: Palm Springs, once the lone winter resort for the stars and now popular for its retro architecture such as flying-saucer roofs and steel-and-glass buildings, is 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. Two presidents retired to the desert here: Dwight Eisenhower in Palm Desert for the winters and Gerald Ford in nearby Rancho Mirage. The population is nearly 300,000 for the entire corridor if you count Indio and Coachella, the heavily Latino and fast-growing cities in the agricultural Coachella Valley, which has 75% of the country's date palms and features camel races at its annual date festival; Rolling Stone magazine called the launch of the annual music festival in Coachella one of the 50 greatest moments in rock history.

The 45th Congressional District of California covers almost all the desert in Riverside County from Blythe on the Nevada border to Palm Springs. The Joshua Tree National Park, with its high desert sands, is a popular tourist spot, with growing real estate values in nearby towns. About half its population lives west of the 10,000-foot peak that looms above Palm Springs, in fast-growing Moreno Valley and socially conservative Murrieta and in the old town of Hemet surrounded by surreal landscape. This area tends to vote Republican; it voted 51% for George W. Bush in 2000 and 56% in 2004.

The congresswoman from the 45th District is Mary Bono, who won the seat in April 1998 after the death of 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 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. She met Sonny Bono 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. She 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. 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 initially secured $13.4 million for what became the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. She later pushed for engineering projects to reduce the heavy salinity of the lake and to assure continuing sources of fresh water; if successful, one result could be to avoid further deterioration of air quality in Southern California. Final costs likely would exceed $1 billion. With her seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, she worked on a bill to require companies to expense their employee stock options. Other committee work included her legislation to crack down on invasive computer "spyware", which she discovered when purple gorillas kept appearing on her home computer after her two teen-agers inadvertently downloaded the software; in October 2004, the House passed her bill. Bono, who collects about $100,000 annually from her late husband's royalties, has opposed legislation to relax controls on digital piracy.

Mary Bono has been easily reelected. She was considered a possible candidate for Barbara Boxer's Senate seat in 2004: Sonny Bono ran for the seat in 1992, and finished third in the Republican primary. She also was mentioned as the possible new head of the Recording Industry Association of America, but she decided to remain in the House.

Committees

• Energy & Commerce (21st of 31 R): Commerce, Trade & Consumer Protection; Energy & Air Quality; Environment & Hazardous Materials; Health.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	35	25	13	18	90	51	100	56	77	84	--
2003	10	--	0	10	--	55	93	72	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	36%	--	64%		35%	--	65%
Social	49%	--	50%		56%	--	44%
Foreign	42%	--	57%		50%	--	50%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Drilling in ANWR Y 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 3. Medicare/Rx Bill Y 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. N 5. DC School Vouchers Y 6. Ban Human Cloning Y		7. Restrict Gun Liability Y  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Fund Iraq War Y 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y 12. Intelligence Reorg. Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Mary Bono (R)	153,523	67%	$501,088
	Richard Meyer (D)	76,967	33%	$262,288
2004 primary	Mary Bono (R)	51,429	86%
	John Barker (R)	8,422	14%
2002 general	Mary Bono (R)	87,101	65%	$582,769
	Elle Kurpiewski (D)	43,692	33%	$312,387
	Other	2,740	2%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (59%); 1998 (60%); 1998 (64%)

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 132,288 (56%) Kerry (D) 101,679 (43%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 93,802 (51%) Gore (D) 85,427 (47%)

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.