Kit Bond

A sixth-generation Missourian, Bond was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth (née Green) and Arthur D. Bond.[3] His father was captain of the 1924 Missouri Tigers football team and a Rhodes Scholar. His maternal grandfather, A.P. Green, founded A.P. Green Industries, a fireclay manufacturer and a major employer for many years in Bond's hometown Mexico, Missouri.

Bond graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1956 and then attended Princeton University and graduated in 1960 with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He completed a 162-page senior thesis that year titled "Missouri Farm Organizations and the Problems of Agriculture".[4] While a student at Princeton, Bond was a member of the Quadrangle Club.[5] He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1963 with a J.D.

Bond served as a law clerk (1963–64) to the Honorable Elbert Tuttle, then Chief Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia. Bond practiced law (1964–67) at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.[6]

Bond moved back to his hometown of Mexico, Missouri in the fall of 1967, and ran for Congress in 1968 in Missouri's 9th congressional district, the rural northeastern part of the state. He defeated Anthony Schroeder in the August Republican primary, 56% to 44%, winning 19 of the district's 23 counties.[7]

In the November general election, Bond nearly defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Bill Hungate, 48% to 52%. Bond won eight of the district's 23 counties.[8] Out of Hungate's five re-election campaigns, that 1968 election against Bond was his worst performance.[9]

State Attorney General John Danforth hired Bond as an Assistant Attorney General in 1969, where Bond led the office's Consumer Protection Division. In 1970, at the age of 31, Bond was elected Missouri State Auditor.[10]

Bond in 1981

In 1972, Bond was elected governor of Missouri by a margin of 55% to 45%, making him, at 33 years of age, the youngest governor in the history of Missouri. Bond was the first Republican in 28 years to serve as governor of Missouri.[10]

Bond's residency qualifications to be governor were challenged, but were upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court in 1972. Missouri law said the governor had to be a resident for 10 years. In the 10 years before his run, he had attended law school in Virginia, clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta, worked for a firm in Washington, D.C., applied to take the bar in Virginia and Georgia, registered a car in Washington, D.C., and applied for a marriage license in Kentucky. The Court sided with him noting that residence "is largely a matter of intention" and did not require "actual, physical presence." The court ruled that a residence was "that place where a man has his true, fixed and permanent home and principal establishment, and to which whenever he is absent he has the intention of returning."[11]

In 1976, he was on the short list to be Gerald Ford's vice presidential running mate.[12]

In many ways Bond governed as a moderate during his first term as governor: for example, he drew criticism from conservatives for his support of the Equal Rights Amendment. On June 25, 1976 he signed an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order against Mormons issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs on October 27, 1838.[13]

In 1976, in a surprising upset, Bond was narrowly defeated for re-election by Democrat Joseph P. Teasdale, then Jackson County Prosecutor. Four years later, in 1980, Bond made a successful comeback, defeating fellow Republican and incumbent Lieutenant Governor Bill Phelps in the primary, and Teasdale in November. Among Bond's most noted accomplishments was helping take the Parents As Teachers program statewide.[14][15]

Bond served as the Chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association in 1977 and 1983.[16]

Bond was succeeded as governor in 1985 by John Ashcroft, a Republican who Bond had appointed to complete his unexpired term as State Auditor after he was elected governor. Ashcroft later served alongside Bond in the Senate.[17]

After leaving office in January 2011, Bond joined the law firm of Thompson Coburn.[2][32]

Bond serves as a co-chair of the Housing Commission at the Bipartisan Policy Center.[33]

In August 2011, Bond announced that he would join alliantgroup's strategic advisory board and serve as a senior adviser for the firm.[34]

Bond formally launched his own firm, Kit Bond Strategies, in November 2011.[35]

In the last few days of his long political career, Kit Bond and his staff solved a mystery that had intrigued the press, Missouri politicians, and members of academia for much of 2010. Missouri state officials had wrongly believed that the state museum held a rare and valuable Apollo 17 lunar sample display containing a "goodwill Moon rock". On June 8, 2010, the state realized that what they actually had was only the Missouri Apollo 11 lunar sample display containing small samples of Moon dust rather than the $5-million piece of Apollo 17 history.[36][37] In cleaning out his senatorial office in December 2010, it was discovered that Bond had inadvertently taken the Apollo 17 display when he had left the governor's office. He subsequently returned the display to the governor of Missouri at the time, Jay Nixon, who passed it on to the Missouri State Museum. Bond was one of four former governors who had taken their states' lunar sample displays upon leaving office; the other three were the former governors of Colorado, West Virginia, and Arkansas.[38][39]

Bond's son Sam returned in the fall of 2007 from his second tour of duty in Iraq, and is an officer in the United States Marine Corps.

In 1994, Bond's wife, Carolyn, filed for a divorce, which was finalized the following year. Bond married Linda Pell, now Linda Bond, in 2002. She grew up in the Kansas City suburb of Gladstone and works as a consultant to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She and Bond had dated for about a year before they were engaged on May 17, 2001, and had also dated in 1996 and 1997. It is her second marriage as well.

After winning his second term as governor, Bond sued his investment manager and Paine Webber, alleging his $1.3 million trust fund had been drained. He was one of several clients who sued, and he settled in 1996 for $900,000.[40][41]

In 2009, Bond co-authored a book with Lewis Simons entitled The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam.[42]

Bond has permanent vision loss in one eye, which he attributes to undiagnosed amblyopia during childhood.[43][44]

• Christopher S. Bond Bridge (Hermann, Missouri)
• Christopher S. Bond Bridge, Kansas City
• Christopher S. Bond United States Courthouse, Jefferson City
• Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center – University of Missouri (Columbia), Columbia, Missouri
• Christopher S. "Kit" Bond Science and Technology Incubator – Missouri Western State University, St. Joseph, Missouri[45]
• Kit Bond Visitor Center (USACE project office) Stockton, Missouri

After over 40 years in politics, Senator Bond announced on January 8, 2009 that he would not seek re-election in 2010.[46] Results of elections in which he was a candidate are summarized as follows:

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kit Bond.

• Lawmakers Investigate CIA Interrogation Tape Disposal PBS Newshour, December 11, 2007, transcript of interview with Gwen Ifill