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Sonny Bono: California Senate
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Sonny Salvatore Bono was born February 12, 1935 in Detroit, Michigan to a butcher and his homemaker wife. At the age of 7, his family relocated to Southern California. The young Bono was a talented writer, and penned songs and poems in his spare time. The third child of Sicilian immigrants, Bono was a poor student and dropped out of high school to write music, supporting himself as a waiter, construction worker, truck driver and butcher's helper.
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Sonny Bono first gained fame in the 1960s as part of the singing duo Sonny and Cher. Their television show made them household names; Bono, with droopy mustache and psychedelic clothes, played a lovable goofball. (The two divorced in 1974.) Despite the enduring goofball tag, Bono was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. He died after skiing into a tree at the Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California. His wife Mary replaced him in his congressional seat.
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SONNY --In 1954 Sonny moves to Los Angelos, California. He gets a job at Douglas Aircraft; and then at Specialty Records as a record packer. He writes a song called "Highschool Dance"(note: good song!). It is put onto the flip side of the hit record, "Short Fat Fanny" sung by Larry Williams. He writes other songs with some success, including "Koko Joe" sung by The Righteous Brothers. He ... records/sings under the following names, Don Christy, Sonny Christie and Ronny Sommers.
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Mr. Bono was elected mayor in 1988 and served until 1992, when he ran unsuccessfully in the California Republican primary for a seat in the United States Senate that was eventually won by Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. But he bounced back in 1994, winning his Congressional seat in the Republican tide that wrested control of the House from the Democrats for the first time in 40 years. Mr. Bono, who represented the state's 44th Congressional District -- a heavily Republican area that sprawls across the desert in Southern California -- defeated his Democratic opponent, Steve Clute, by 56 percent to 38 percent, and was re-elected in 1996.
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No hard feelings: In 1994, Bono was elected to Congress as California's 44th-district representative. The 61-year-old Republican neophyte's most notable achievement? A back-burnered bill to mandate changes in the way judges review voter initiatives. ''He's perceived as doing a fairly good job for a freshman,'' says Keith Carter, editorial page editor of the local paper, The Desert Sun. Carter notes, though, that some residents find Bono ''an embarrassment -- inarticulate and unsophisticated.'' Brooklyn representative Charles Schumer rebuked Bono publicly for his impatience during a 1995 meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, saying ''We're making laws here, not sausages.'' Bono (who did not return calls for this story) plans to run for reelection this year, but the jury is still out. Is he a real politician, or does he just play one on C-SPAN?
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[T]here were many raised eyebrows when Bono decided to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1992. He lost the Republican primary, and the seat was eventually won by Democrat Dianne Feinstein. But in 1994, swept in on a Republican tide, Bono won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He beat his Democratic opponent by winning 56 percent of the vote. According to the New York Times, Bono arrived in Washington D.C. "with the image of a well-heeled but lightweight show-business celebrity. He quickly proved engaging and shrewd, a fairly dutiful legislator and an engaging speaker."
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