Bono Wears Inexperience Like a Campaign Button : Senate: Entertainer-turned-Palm Springs mayor cherishes the underdog role as he chases political pack.

Spring break was fast approaching, college kids were invading, and Mayor Sonny Bono had work to do.

On a typically frenetic morning, Bono dashed to City Hall to plot spring break strategy with the Palm Springs police chief. On the agenda: obscene T-shirts, the thong-bikini ordinance, vacationers with guns.

As Bono discussed these delicate matters with his staff, the telephone rang. It was a reporter from Rolling Stone. Is it true, the magazine asked, that Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot has invited you to join his ticket as the vice presidential candidate?

“I can deny it,” an amused Bono stammered with a grin. “I’m running for U.S. senator. . . . The Senate . . . . That’s as far as I’m thinking--for now.”

Salvatore Bono--businessman, restaurateur, Palm Springs mayor and, yes, former singing partner of Cher--is this season’s most unlikely Senate candidate, an aspirant to the Republican nomination for the six-year seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston.

To answer the first question that always greets Bono: Yes, he insists, he is serious about this race.

“This is not a lark,” Bono recently told reporters. “I’m very dedicated about this job. . . . And I’m a fighter, and I’m gonna fight as long as I can.”

Confronting the widely held perception that he is not suited to hold a major statewide office, Bono, 57, is campaigning hard, making the rounds of California Republican clubs, candidate debates and radio and cable television talk shows.

In fact, Bono is a candidate who wears his inexperience and apparent lack of qualifications like a campaign button. He is proud to note that he is not a professional politician armed with all the right answers. To hear him tell it, he seems to relish the underdog fight, and always has.

“What is qualified?” he said in an interview when the inevitable query came up. “What have I been qualified for in my life? I haven’t been qualified to be a mayor. I’m not qualified to be a songwriter. I’m not qualified to be a TV producer. I’m not qualified to be a successful businessman.

“And so, I don’t know what qualified means. And I think people get too hung up on that in a way, you know?”

His successes, he points out, have come almost in spite of his abilities--or at least the public perception of those abilities. He wrote 10 hit songs, yet cannot read music, he says. He knew little about business but ran a moderately popular eatery; he knew nothing about government but will finish a so-so term as mayor this week.

With a healthy ego, a tough hide and a certain measure of gut-level street smarts, Bono’s strategy is to play the outsider theme. In a year of electoral Angst, he hopes to plug into the vast public psyche that is fed up with politicians.

Scripting this campaign is the highly regarded political consultant Bill Lacey, who ran George Bush’s successful presidential bid in California four years ago. Thick loose-leaf notebook in hand, Lacey has spent long hours coaching Bono on issues, questions and answers.

Their efforts so far have earned the former songwriter a respectable--though last-place--showing in opinion polls. Bono is running in the Republican primary against conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn of Los Angeles and U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell of Palo Alto.

Although the political Establishment is generally dubious that Bono can win the Senate seat, he has become a factor in the race by siphoning off some of Campbell’s support and allowing Herschensohn to emerge as the front-runner. In a California Poll last month, Bono tallied 19%, behind 25% for Campbell and 28% for Herschensohn.

More telling than the poll may be his nearly empty bank account. He is woefully behind other candidates in fund raising, with a paltry $40,000 on hand after taking in $157,584 in the last three months.

Bono was born in Detroit in 1935 to an Italian-immigrant truck driver and his young Italian-American wife, the union a product of Old World, Sicilian arrangement. The Bono family moved to Hawthorne when Sonny was a youngster, and he attended Inglewood High School.

Never the academically inclined student, Bono found his niche by playing the class clown, the entertainer, the kid who arranged the talent for school assemblies. One year he brought to school the rhythm-and-blues act of saxophone player Jimmy Jackson; he was suspended by appalled teachers.

“It just shocked the teachers because these guys would get down in the aisle, and it looked like they were having sex with their saxophone, you know, they’d swing it up and down between their legs, and the teachers, in ‘51, it just was, it was outrageous.”

Despite claims to the contrary in his autobiography, Bono did not graduate from high school; according to his campaign staff, he failed a physical education class.

In 1952, the year he left school, he took a job delivering meat. He already knew he wanted to write songs, so he finagled a delivery route that took him along Sunset Boulevard, where dozens of independent record labels had offices.

Those were the embryonic days of the pop music scene, when a guy with little more than a dream and persistence actually had a chance of making it. He landed temporary jobs promoting artists such as Little Richard and producing records. Bono hooked up with legendary record producer Phil Spector, and when a 16-year-old runaway who called herself Cher drifted into Bono’s life, a star act was born.

“She wanted to be an entertainer more than I’ve ever seen anybody want to be an entertainer in my life,” Bono says as his voice softens. “And she was very talented.”

The singing duo--she the long-haired, exotic beauty, he the goofy, nasal-voiced bumbler--hit the big time with Bono’s song, “I Got You Babe,” in 1965, and they evolved into highly successful nightclub and television entertainers. Their weekly variety series lasted on the CBS network for several years, and they became regulars in Las Vegas.

Bono divorced his first wife, Donna, soon after he met Cher, but Sonny and Cher would not be married until years later, after the birth of their daughter, Chastity. Bono had another daughter, Christy, in his first marriage.

Sonny and Cher--the marriage--split in 1974. The union was torn apart by extramarital affairs, and the divorce settlement was bitter. (According to Bono’s 1991 memoirs, Cher got one 54-room mansion, half the royalties from the duo’s hits and had to pay Sonny $750,000; Sonny got a 32-room mansion.)

Cher’s career continued to prosper; Bono went through some difficult times. He got the occasional guest spot on episodes of “Love Boat” or minor movies. He reinvented himself as a restaurateur and businessman, and in 1983 opened an eatery in Los Angeles.

The fame Sonny Bono enjoyed is both a curse and a blessing as he runs for the Senate. It gives him almost universal name recognition, but the kooky image is something he finds himself forced to overcome. He hopes voters will look at his record as mayor of Palm Springs, where his proudest accomplishments include establishing a film festival and balancing a budget in his second year in office. (After that, the deficit returned; Bono blames the recession and the decline in tourism.)

Despite his years as an entertainer, Bono often seems oddly uncomfortable in speaking engagements and broadcast interviews. He frequently has trouble expressing himself, becoming tongue-tied and stumbling over some words. He fares better at scripted events.

At the GOP state convention in Burlingame this year, he managed to get off some zingy one-liners during a debate with Campbell and Herschensohn.

“Tom,” Bono said, addressing Campbell by his first name, “you went to D.C. to clean up the pigpen, and you wound up at the trough with the hogs.”

Later: “I’ve written 10 hit songs and I know this: Tom, you’re not in tune with California Republicans.”

As he fielded questions, though, it became obvious to even a sympathetic audience that Bono was reading from notes.

“Hey, can you do it without your glasses?” one man shouted from the audience.

Bono recognizes readily that he is not a glib politician who can easily express his opinions and stances.

“I can’t articulate it (positions),” he told reporters later. “God, if I could, if I could, if I could (do it) like these guys (the opponents), I would love it. But, you know, that’s something I guess I’m gonna have to learn, how to throw that articulation out there.”

The low point probably came at a news conference the day after the debate in Burlingame. In the debate, Bono had mentioned his concern that some Third World countries were approaching nuclear capability. Reporters repeatedly asked Bono to specify which countries he had in mind, but he could not come up with a name.

Similar confusion reigned on the question of defense cuts, as he hemmed and hawed while reporters tried to extract dollar figures and budget percentages. He first said he supported President Bush’s program, then did not seem to know exactly what it was. Finally, he said he did not know which weapons he wanted cut.

Weeks later in an interview at his Southwestern-style villa on a hill overlooking Palm Springs, Bono spoke bitterly of that news conference performance.

“Every newspaper in the world hit me on the head with a baseball bat,” Bono said. “What happened is they played Ping-Pong with my head.

“That was a great thing to happen to me because I woke up. I said: ‘OK, that’s the last time I’ll ever get intimidated by any newspapers.’ They overwhelmed me. And one good thing about me: I’m a real Sicilian. And I walked outta the room and I said I’ll never let that happen again. And it won’t. . . . I’m not gonna be the patsy.”

What he lacks in smoothness, Bono insists he makes up with down-home simplicity, “common sense” and an ability to get things done by being willing to take the heat.

He supports gradual defense cuts (“no one knows numbers”), retraining of defense industry workers, standardizing health insurance forms to reduce bureaucracy, and slashing the capital gains tax to 15%. He advocates abortion rights for women.

Today’s Sonny Bono has shed the Nehru jackets and bell-bottoms of his singing days. He wears double-breasted suits on his wiry frame, and his trademark, droopy mustache is now peppered with gray. Horn-rim glasses sit on his large nose, his eyes encased in rings of wrinkles that deepen when he smiles.

He married his fourth wife, Mary, six years ago. She is 30. They met in 1985, on a night she and friends had wandered into Bono’s Melrose Avenue restaurant to celebrate her graduation from USC with an art history degree. He says it was love at first sight.

“By then I was 50 years old,” Bono said. “I didn’t think I was ever gonna hook up with somebody again and then we hooked up and my whole life changed from that point on. . . . She believed in me.”

Sonny and Mary Bono have two children: a 4-year-old son, Chesare, and a 14-month-old daughter, Chianna. Chastity (Cher’s daughter) is 23 and in the process of cutting her first album; Christine (Donna’s daughter) is 33 and owns a restaurant in Santa Monica.

Giving his children names that begin with “Ch” is a tradition Bono said he continued with his most recent offspring so that they feel “connected” to their older half-siblings.

Even the two chow dogs who greet a visitor in the driveway are so-named: China and Cheetah.

The family seems comfortably ensconced in the 8,000-square-foot home, the former 1920s mansion of the Gillette (razor blades) family. Priced today at $2.75 million, it sits on two acres of palm trees behind an electronic gate posted with three “Beware of Dog” signs.

Bono has done extensive work on the place. Imported Italian marble lines the floors, blue mosaic tiles were used to form the swimming pool, and leopard skins (Bono’s campaign says they are stenciled cowhides) cover the seats of the dining room set.

Bono’s goal as mayor of Palm Springs was to promote tourism and bring prosperity to the desert resort. He likes to say he got into politics to fight municipal bureaucracy; by most accounts, once in office, he learned a lot on the job but was shocked to find things were not quite as easy to change as he had hoped.

Reviews are decidedly mixed for Bono’s four-year tenure. Supporters praise him as a quick study who has brought attention to Palm Springs; critics say he has not been accessible to his constituents and has backtracked on many of his promises.

Marilyn Baker, a 12-year resident of Palm Springs who ran Bono’s mayoral campaign, is typical of his disenchanted former followers.

“Sonny ran as the outsider, the rebel, a crusader, and 24 hours after the election, he was one of the Establishment that he was crusading against,” she said. “He became one of them.”

Bono is coming under considerable scrutiny for his connections to the Church of Scientology, a controversial group founded by L. Ron Hubbard that has been labeled a cult by its detractors. He denies that the group has a hold on him and says he is a lifelong Roman Catholic.

And he recently admitted to reporters that he never registered to vote until 1987, the year he began contemplating the run for mayor. On another potentially thorny matter, Bono says he never used drugs, despite their commonplace presence in the music industry that gave him his start.

Bono’s motives for seeking higher office can be gleaned from his memoirs, “And the Beat Goes On.” His life has been one of beating the odds, overcoming his own doubts--and especially those of others; of making it, getting knocked down, starting over and making it again.

In his book, he recalls the first time he sang on television, in 1952, on an amateur-hour talent competition program called “Search for Songs.” On the night of his performance he filled the audience with friends because the winner would be determined by applause. He nervously sang a song he wrote, “Ecstasy,” his knees shaking throughout the show.

“I won the competition anyway,” he writes. “I don’t know if I was the best, but the applause meter shot off the scale. . . . My prize was a transistor radio. But sweeter than the victory was standing onstage and drinking up the rousing ovation my friends gave me. What a buzz. The rush rocketed straight to my head. It was like drinking 110-proof moonshine.

“And that was it. I knew I had found myself. Sure, I was scared . . . of performing in front of people. But the recognition, the validation, the acceptance--they were overwhelming. I was instantly addicted.”

Profile: Sonny Bono

Sonny Bono is seeking the Republican nomination for a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. The seat is held by Democrat Alan Cranston, who is retiring.

Born: Feb. 16, 1935, Detroit.

Residence: Palm Springs.

Education: Attended Inglewood High School, 1948-52.

Career highlights: Author of 10 hit songs, including “I Got You Babe;” half of the successful singing duo Sonny and Cher in the 1960s and 70s; restaurateur; mayor of Palm Springs, 1988-92.

Personal: Married Mary Whitaker in 1986, his fourth wife. A daughter and one son with Mary Bono; two daughters from previous marriages.

Quote: “Bureaucracy, I hate it.”