Jo Ann Emerson
Jo Ann Emerson (b. September 16, 1950) is a politician from the state of Missouri, currently representing the state's 8th Congressional district (map) in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Emerson was born in Bethesda, Maryland and she graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University. She married then-lobbyist and future congressman Bill Emerson in 1975. Bill was elected to Congress in 1980 and he died of cancer on June 22, 1996. Jo Ann decided to run for the House of Representatives after Bill's death, but Missouri state law prohibited her from filing to run in the Republican primary. In November, Emerson ran in two elections on the same day. She ran as an independent against Democrat Emily Firebaugh and Republican Richard Kline in the general election and as a Republican against Firebaugh in the special election to finish the last two months of her late husband's term. She won both elections easily, and she has been reelected four times without serious difficulty. In 2002, Emerson rejected calls for her to run for US Senate against fellow politican and widow Jean Carnahan.
On May 24, 2005, Emerson was one of 50 Republicans to vote in favor of overturning President Bush's ban on federal funding for stem cell research. She cast her Yea vote the day after her mother-in-law passed away from Alzheimer's Disease, one of the illnesses scientists believed they can create better treatments for from stem cell researching.
The Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge which crosses the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau is named after her late husband.
Recent controversy has surrounded a letter (dated February 15, 2006) sent to a consituent, Mr. Bill Jones, in response to an inquiry about oil executives. An unknown individual slipped in the sentence "i think you're an [expletive]." Congresswoman Emerson denied any knowledge of this odd addition to the letter.
