Bono Turned Beltway Snickers to Respect With Wit, Humility

The lights were off Tuesday morning in Sonny Bono’s congressional office. Three staff members huddled in the middle of the room, never bothering to turn them on.

This moment of private contemplation would be brief. Word of the shocking death of the Palm Springs Republican was getting out, and soon there would be mourning on both coasts.

Camera crews were assembling in the hallway, one from CBS News and one from the entertainment show “Extra”--a collision of Washington and Hollywood’s parallel universes, two worlds where Bono had, to the surprise of almost everyone but him, come to feel perfectly at ease.

No one knew quite what to make of this ex-pop star and aging hippie when he landed on the Capitol steps four years ago. The federal city can be a mean place, and among the unabashedly snobby political elite Bono was viewed as the laughingstock of the GOP’s famed Class of ’94. The Washington Post unapologetically dubbed him an “idiot savant from way beyond the Beltway;” veteran House staffers secretly referred to him as “Sonny Bonehead.”

But before his life ended Monday on a Lake Tahoe ski slope, Salvatore Bono would make his mark on Capitol Hill almost as surely as he did in the entertainment world.

Methodically and with disarming humor, he converted skeptic to friend and took his place as a prolific GOP money-raiser, second only to House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the most sought-after presence at Republican Party events.

He filled an unusual niche that arguably no other House member could--as court jester, a master of comic relief who cut through the paralyzing Washington tension and made an utterly humorless institution laugh at itself.

He will be remembered less for legislation that he tried to steer through Congress to protect state voter initiatives than for the 15 cheese pizzas he ordered during a gridlocked Judiciary Committee hearing, the mere aroma of which brought the session to a merciful end.

And during the GOP leadership crisis last summer, when Republicans held a confessional session to figure out how to put the failed coup against Gingrich behind them, it was Bono’s self-deprecating story about the time he got chewed out for flubbing a line on “Fantasy Island” that helped pull them out of their funk.

“That was God’s way of saying, ‘Sonny, it’s time to put this behind you,’ ” he told his grim-faced fellow Republicans, and left them rolling in the aisles.

He had a way of keeping things moving along, of reminding other lawmakers that if Sonny Bono didn’t get it, most of America wouldn’t either.

“Boy, it’s been flying in this room like I can’t believe today,” Bono scolded his bombastic colleagues on the Judiciary panel a year ago during a debate on expanding the rights of police to search citizens. He was undaunted by the fact that he was one of only two nonlawyers in the group.

His often disjointed political discourse became a trademark that was not suffered well at first. “I have never heard a less enlightening answer,” committee member Barney Frank (D-Mass.) remarked after listening to a Bono dissertation on states’ rights.

But slowly, and rather unexpectedly, House members came to respect him for his ability to take seriously the issues but never himself, his refusal to be intimidated by the best of them. In time, many concluded that there was more to him than met the eye.

“A lot of people come to Washington pretending to be smart, but they are not very smart,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon). “Sonny was a guy who pretended not to be smart, but was extremely smart.”

Even the liberal Frank ultimately was won over: “I valued him not only as a colleague, but as a friend,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

So what if Bono couldn’t immediately remember the acronym for the Department of Health and Human Services, or if, when in doubt, he simply voted the way Gingrich did? In a city where politicians deny their sins and cover up their mistakes, Bono was the first to admit his shortcomings.

“He was what he was. He was certainly not putting on any false airs,” said press secretary Frank Cullen, who had worked with Bono since 1988. “He always understood that if he worked harder than everybody else, he’d be OK.”

Most of the world knew him less as a two-term congressman than as Cher’s verbal punching bag, the singer with a Prince Valiant haircut in bell bottoms and a bobcat vest. It was an indelible image he never tried to shed in Washington; indeed, he embraced it, taking the stage at a Capitol Hill bar a couple of summers ago to belt out “I Got You Babe.” The crowd went wild.

By his own admission, Bono was no legislative giant. “It’s a hill that I will have to climb, that I am climbing,” he said shortly after arriving in Washington. “But they are going to find out that I know a little more than they think I do.”

For the most part, he was a loyal Republican soldier with a solidly conservative voting record, except for his defense of abortion rights. He supported the defense of marriage in a law aimed at discouraging homosexual marriages, even though his daughter Chastity is gay.

Bono’s legislative legacy will probably center most on the cleanup of the Salton Sea, the largest inland lake in the West. For the past couple of years, he worked hard to bring attention to the environmental problems plaguing the lake, and recently brought Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to his district to visit the site.

“Systematically and progressively, Sonny has brought a lot of members of Congress to the point of saying this is an asset worth saving and may be worth spending money on,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands).

Gingrich said Tuesday that, to honor Bono’s memory, he would make saving the Salton Sea “a top environmental priority of this Congress.”

Still, there were always snickers about Bono’s intellect. They were no secret to him, and he never seemed to mind. He made a life out of overcoming the odds--running a successful restaurant after his entertainment career ended, winning election as mayor of Palm Springs and ranking as one of the 50 richest members of Congress.

“I’ve had three careers. I’ve come off the mat three times when I was supposed to be down,” he said one day from his Capitol Hill office, 18-karat Cartier cuff links in the shape of elephants at his wrists. “To think that could possibly be an accident, you would have to not be very bright.”

He figured that if he just took his time, even an arrogant Washington would come to respect him. And it seems he was right, if the remembrances that poured in Tuesday are any measure.

From President Clinton: “His joyful entertainment of millions earned him celebrity, but in Washington he earned respect by being a witty and wise participant in policymaking processes that often seem ponderous to the American people.”

From Gingrich: “Sonny brought wisdom and joy to the House. . . . His death has left a hole in Congress, and he will be missed.”

From Lewis, dean of the California Republicans here: “He was one of the most remarkable and uniquely inspiring individuals I have ever known.”

On Tuesday, the flags at the House office buildings on Capitol Hill flew at half-staff in Bono’s honor.

Times staff writers Ed Chen and Janet Hook contributed to this report.