Mary Bono

Mary Bono Oswald (née Whitaker and formerly Mary Bono Mack, born October 24, 1961) is an American politician, businesswoman and lobbyist who represented California's 44th and 45th districts in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1998 and 2013.

A member of the Republican Party, Bono was first elected to Congress in 1998 to replace her late husband, Sonny Bono, who had died in office months earlier. She sat on the Energy and Commerce Committee and was chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade. In 1998, Bono served on the House Judiciary Committee that approved articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Bono served in Congress until losing her 2012 reelection bid.

In March 2013, Bono became a senior vice president at the Washington, D.C.-based federal affairs firm Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting. In 2018, she founded the political affairs consulting firm Integritas by Bono.

Bono was born Mary Whitaker in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Karen Lee (née Taylor), a chemist, and Dr. Clay Westerfield Whitaker, a physician and World War II veteran. In 1963, the family moved to South Pasadena, California. She graduated from South Pasadena High School in 1979, then from the University of Southern California in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts in art history. Whitaker was an accomplished gymnast in her youth and worked as a cocktail waitress during her early twenties.

In 1986, Whitaker married singer, actor, and politician Sonny Bono. They moved to Palm Springs, California where Sonny Bono served as mayor from 1988 to 1992 before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. The congressman died in a skiing accident on January 5, 1998, during his second term in Congress, leaving a vacant seat in the House, which Mary Bono would then pursue.

In 1998, Mary Bono won the Republican nomination for the special election to succeed her late husband in what was then California's 44th congressional district. She was then elected to Congress on April 7, 1998. Bono won election to a full term on November 3, 1998.

That same year, Bono was added to the House Judiciary Committee by the Republican leadership in anticipation of the consideration of impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton, thus becoming the only Republican woman on the committee during the impeachment inquiry. Bono voted along party lines on all four motions for impeachment in both the committee and on the House floor, despite other moderate Republican House members voting against Articles II, III, and IV. Bono's service on the House Judiciary panel increased her national profile considerably.

Bono served in Congress for 15 years. In 2011, her bill, H.R. 2715, was signed into law with bipartisan support to amend and improve the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. The daughter of a veteran, Bono also played a key role in creation of VA clinics in Blythe and Palm Desert, California. In December 2010, she was one of fifteen Republican House members to vote in favor of repealing the United States military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on openly homosexual service members.

After the 2010 United States census, Bono's district was renumbered as the 36th district and made somewhat more Democratic and Hispanic than its predecessor. In a significant upset, Democratic challenger Raul Ruiz, a physician, defeated her with 53 percent of the vote to Bono's 47.1 percent.

In 2013, Bono was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

After attending a lecture by mountaineer-turned-humanitarian Greg Mortenson, Bono worked with him to aid his efforts to build schools for girls in the mountainous regions of Pakistan. Bono is quoted in Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea as saying "I've learned more from Greg Mortenson about the causes of terrorism than during all our briefings on Capitol Hill."

On March 1, 1986, she married actor/singer Sonny Bono. The Bonos moved to Palm Springs, where they owned and operated a restaurant. Sonny Bono served as Mayor of Palm Springs from 1988 to 1992 before being elected to Congress in 1994. The Bonos had two children: Chesare (b. April 25, 1988) and Chianna (b. February 2, 1991). Sonny Bono died on January 5, 1998, in a skiing accident.

After Sonny Bono's death in 1998, Bono began dating Brian Prout, drummer of the country music band Diamond Rio. The two became engaged in 2001 but did not marry.