Former Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a senior appropriator who built a reputation as a collegial, cigar-puffing pragmatist, died on Tuesday at the age of 86, the office of Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced. No cause of death was provided.
Bond, best known by his nickname, “Kit,” left the Senate in 2011. He surprised supporters when he announced he wouldn’t seek a fifth term, closing a 40-year political career that made him his state’s pre-eminent GOP power broker.
“In 1972, I became Missouri’s youngest governor,” he said at the time. “I do not aspire to become Missouri’s oldest senator.”
