Jo Ann Emerson (née Hermann; born September 16, 1950) is an American politician who was the U.S. representative for from 1996 to 2013. The district consists of Southeast and South Central Missouri and includes the Bootheel, the Lead Belt and the Ozarks. Emerson is a member of the Republican Party. On January 22, 2013, Emerson resigned her seat in Congress to become the president and chief executive officer of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. She served as CEO until August 2015.
With the defeat of Congressman Ike Skelton, Emerson became the dean of Missouri's congressional delegation in 2011.
Early life, education and career
She was born Jo Ann Hermann in Bethesda, Maryland. She was a daughter of Al Hermann, who played for the Boston Braves baseball team from 1923 to 1924 and was executive director of the Republican National Committee. She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University.
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee assignments
Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (Chairwoman) Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch (Vice Chair)
Other memberships
Vice President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Democratic Governance
Vice Chair of the Center Aisle Caucus
Honorary and Life Trustee of Westminster College
Co-chair of the board of directors for the Congressional Hunger Center
Founding Member of the Bipartisan Congressional Retreat
Emerson, whose voting record in Congress has established her as one of the more moderate Republicans, has a history of bipartisanship while in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was a member of the moderate Republican groups the Republican Main Street Partnership and the Tuesday Group.
On May 24, 2005, Emerson was one of 50 Republicans to vote in favor of overturning President George W. Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. She cast her "yea" vote the day after her mother-in-law died from Alzheimer's disease, one of the illnesses for which scientists believe they can create better treatments from stem cell research.
On July 12, 2007, Emerson was one of only four Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who voted to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by April 2008.
On September 15, 2009, Emerson was one of seven House Republicans to vote in favor of the Democrats' proposed resolution to condemn U.S. Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) for shouting "You lie!" in the middle of President Barack Obama's joint address to the U.S. Congress on health care reform.
Her margins of victory in the district have always been higher than those of GOP presidential candidates George W. Bush and John McCain as well as Republican gubernatorial candidates Kenny Hulshof, Matt Blunt and Jim Talent.
Emerson announced in early December 2012 her plans to retire from Congress in February 2013 to assume a position with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) as its president and chief executive officer.
Political campaigns
When her husband Bill died in 1996, Jo Ann announced she would run for his vacant seat. However, Missouri state law prohibited her from filing in the Republican primary for the general election. She thus had her party membership suspended. In November, Jo Ann Emerson competed in two elections on the same day. She ran as a Republican against Democrat Emily Firebaugh in the special election to finish the last two months of her late husband's eighth term, and as an independent against Democrat Firebaugh and Republican Richard Kline in the general election for a full two-year term. She won both elections easily, and was then reelected seven times without serious difficulty. She is the first Republican woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Missouri. She served the last two months of her husband's term as a Republican, then as an independent caucusing with the Republicans before officially becoming a Republican again at the onset of the new Congress in 1997. She was briefly the first independent elected to federal office in Missouri in 122 years and is the first, and so far only, woman to be elected and serve in Congress as an independent or third party member.