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Last Updated June 30, 2005
Christopher Bond was first elected to statewide office in 1970 and was first elected to the Senate in 1986. Bond grew up in the town of Mexico, Missouri, where his family were part owners of the largest business, A.P. Green, makers of heat-resistant bricks, which was sold to another firm in 1998. He graduated from Princeton and the University of Virginia law school, then clerked for Judge Elbert Tuttle, one of the great pioneers on civil rights in the Fifth Circuit in Atlanta. He returned to Missouri, practiced law and ran for Congress in 1968, at age 29, and narrowly lost. He was elected state auditor in 1970 and then elected governor at 33 in 1972, and became one of the youngest governors in the nation's history. He lost in an upset to Democrat Joseph Teasdale in 1976 and won a comeback victory against Teasdale in 1980. After two years in private life he ran for the Senate against Harriett Woods, who had come close to beating Bond's longtime ally, then-Senator John Danforth, in 1982. Woods ran a three-part ad showing a farmer breaking into tears as he and his wife told Woods about their foreclosure and named Bond as a board member of the insurance company that foreclosed; evidently this struck voters as either demagoguery or an invasion of privacy, and Woods fell in the polls. Bond won, 53%-47%. Bond has a moderate voting record in the Senate. He has usually worked behind the scenes, trying to forge bipartisan consensus. He was the chief Republican sponsor of the Family and Medical Leave Act, vetoed by George H.W. Bush and signed by Bill Clinton. For years he was the lead Republican senator on housing issues, starting on the Banking Committee and then for years as chairman and ranking member of the VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee. There he has worked in bipartisan fashion with ranking Democrat Barbara Mikulski, funding the space program in which she takes an interest and projects affecting Missouri. Bond has sponsored many amendments aiding inner city organizations and encouraging small businesses in troubled urban areas and has worked cooperatively with many black community leaders in St. Louis and Kansas City, to the point that Kansas City's mayor declined to endorse his Democratic opponent in 1998. When Citizens Against Government Waste named Bond as a promoter of pork barrel projects, Bond replied in 1999, "If they think it's pork, it's an awfully healthy diet for the people of Missouri, and I'm proud to participate in it. Just tell 'em, 'In the next batch, I'll bring along my own barbecue sauce." He has opposed companies and European nations which have sought to ban genetically modified food, of which the chief producer is St. Louis-based Monsanto, and has sought tougher FDA regulation of compounded medicines in pharmacies. On the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, he has worked hard to keep in operation the F-15 production line at Boeing's (formerly McDonnell Douglas's) plant next to the St. Louis airport. In 2004 he got $120 million to build two more F-15s, keeping the production line open until 2008. He criticized the Air Force when an F-15 was bested in competition with a Russian-made SU-30 in tests in India; he said it sent a model without the most advanced radars and that the Air Force wanted to phase out F-15s in order to get more F-22s, made by Lockheed Martin. "I said they sent in the F-15 with one wing tied behind its back. You draw your own conclusions. … They're trying to push the F-22. They want to prevent the F-15 program from being [prolonged]. If there are continuing problems in the F-22 then there will be the option for the Air Force to get more of the F-15. I don't know why they are so resistant to keeping that option alive." Other Missouri interests have prompted Bond initiatives. He was the co-sponsor with Carl Levin of the amendment, passed 62-38 in March 2002, that delayed any increase in CAFE auto mileage standards for two years; Missouri has auto assembly plants. In January 2003 he became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee that has jurisdiction over reauthorization of highway and other transportation spending; he declined the chairmanship of the Small Business Committee to keep this one. He held hearings around Missouri on road issues in 2002 and pushed hard for a $318 billion transportation bill in 2003 and 2004 and he held out in the 2004 conference committee against a lower figure. In 2004 he inserted into the omnibus appropriation $1.7 billion for expansion of the locks used by barges on the Mississippi River, drawing strong opposition from environmental groups. When the Appropriations subcommittees were reorganized in February and March 2005 he did not oppose the breaking up of the VA-HUD Subcommittee; he ended up with the chairmanship of the Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, HUD, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. In March 2005 he said the Bush budget's $284 billion transportation bill "falls short of the investment that is needed to maintain and repair our nation's crumbling infrastructure, much less construct new roads to reduce the time spent in traffic and make much needed safety improvements in rural and urban roads." In September 2003 Bond sponsored an amendment to bar states from imposing on small engines emission standards stricter than federal standards. At issue in his view were 1,750 jobs at two Briggs & Stratton lawn mower factories in Missouri which would be jeopardized by a strict California standard. It passed in November 2003 when Bond reduced the horsepower of affected engines from 175 to 50. But California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger objected and began making calls around Capitol Hill. In conference committee Bond agreed to exempt California from the bill. "In the end, I was unable to guarantee protection of Californians from their fatally flawed rule, but at least Missouri and the rest of the nation is protected from safety hazards and job losses." Bond worked with Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes to move 6,000 IRS employees to the main post office in Kansas; Democratic Congressman Dennis Moore, who represents Kansas City's Kansas suburbs, objected to the removal of jobs from his district but admitted he didn't have the clout to stop it. Bond got his political start as part of a group of young reform-minded Republicans--his former Senate colleague John Danforth was another--working against the Democratic political establishment in Missouri, and he can be a strong partisan on occasion. On election night 2000 he was furious when St. Louis Democrats persuaded a state judge to order the polls opened three extra hours in the city; an appeals court overturned the order within 45 minutes, but Bond, who charged that Democrats tried to keep the St. Louis polls open till midnight to defeat him in 1972, said the election had been stolen, and indeed Republicans Jim Talent and John Ashcroft lost by narrow margins. In Washington Bond became heavily involved in the election procedures bill that was an obvious item of business after the 2000 Florida controversy. The centerpiece of the bill was its national standards for voting equipment coupled with $3.5 million in federal aid and statewide voter registries. Bond argued that the motor voter act had installed and kept on the rolls many names of those not entitled to vote, and insisted on a provision requiring mail-in registrants to vote in person the first time they vote and to present a driver's license or photo identification. He negotiated this with lead Democrat Christopher Dodd; "I've told him [Dodd] that I will agree with his concept that we need to make it easier to vote, if he agrees with my concept that we need to make it harder to cheat." The bill was eventually passed in October 2002. Bond was reelected 52%-45% in 1992, a year in which Missouri Republicans lost every other major race. In 1998, against Attorney General Jay Nixon, he was reelected 53%-44%. Bond lost metro St. Louis by only 49%-48% and carried metro Kansas City (where he lived between his two terms as governor) 51%-45%; he carried rural Missouri 57%-39%. He may have lost some of his support among blacks when he joined John Ashcroft in 1999 in opposing the judicial nomination of Missouri Justice Ronnie White. Democrats hoped to target Bond in 2004, but its most prominent candidates did not run. Congressman Dick Gephardt was running for president, and Governor Bob Holden was running for reelection; Auditor Claire McCaskill was running against Holden in the Democratic primary. Attorney General Jay Nixon had already lost two Senate races, and Lieutenant Governor Joe Maxwell declined to run. But Treasurer Nancy Farmer stepped forward to run; DSCC Chairman Jon Corzine talked up her chances. But unlike Corzine, she was not capable of self-financing a campaign, and Bond outspent her $8.3 million to $3.5 million. Bond ran ads claiming that he had saved Missouri jobs and brought more in: 1,800 jobs at Briggs & Stratton and "thousands more" to Missouri suppliers, 5,000 at Boeing with "800 new jobs on the way." His ads claimed that as treasurer Farmer invested $1 billion out of state, "costing communities 10,000 lost Missouri jobs." Bond won only 14% of the black vote this time and lost metro St. Louis 52%-47%. But he carried usually Democratic metro Kansas City 51%-48% and carried the rest of the state 67%-33%, for a 56%-43% victory, his widest percentage margin ever in a Senate or governor's race.
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