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Jo Ann Emerson
Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMissouri's8th district
In office November 5, 1996 – January 22, 2013
Preceded by	Bill Emerson
Succeeded by	Jason Smith
Personal details
Born	Jo Ann Hermann (1950-09-16)September 16, 1950 (age 75) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Party	Republican (before 1996, 1997–present) Independent (1996–1997)
Other political affiliations	House Republican Conference (1996–2013)
Spouses	Bill Emerson ​ ​ (m. 1975; died 1996)​ Ron Gladney ​ (m. 2000)​
Relatives	Al Hermann (father)
Education	Ohio Wesleyan University (BA)

Jo Ann Emerson (néeHermann; born September 16, 1950) is an American politician who was theU.S. representative forMissouri's 8th congressional district from 1996 to 2013. The district consists of Southeast and South Central Missouri and includes theBootheel, theLead Belt and theOzarks. Emerson is a member of theRepublican Party. On January 22, 2013, Emerson resigned her seat in Congress to become the president and chief executive officer of theNational Rural Electric Cooperative Association. She was CEO until August 2015.

With the defeat of CongressmanIke Skelton, Emerson became the dean ofMissouri's congressional delegation in 2011.

She was born Jo Ann Hermann inBethesda, Maryland. She was a daughter ofAl Hermann, who played for theBoston Braves baseball team from 1923 to 1924 and was executive director of the Republican National Committee.^[1] She graduated fromOhio Wesleyan University.^[2]

• 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)

• 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 theRepublican Main Street Partnership and theTuesday Group.

On May 24, 2005, Emerson was one of 50 Republicans to vote in favor of overturning PresidentGeorge W. Bush's ban on federal funding forembryonic stem cell research. She cast her "yea" vote the day after her mother-in-law died fromAlzheimer'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.^[3]

On September 15, 2009, Emerson was one of seven House Republicans to vote in favor of the Democrats' proposed resolution to condemnU.S. RepresentativeJoe Wilson (R-South Carolina) for shouting "You lie!" in the middle of PresidentBarack 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 candidatesGeorge W. Bush andJohn McCain as well as Republican gubernatorial candidatesKenny Hulshof,Matt Blunt andJim Talent.

Emerson announced in early December 2012 her plans to retire from Congress in February 2013 to assume a position with theNational Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) as its president and chief executive officer.^[4]

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 Republicanprimary 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 anindependent 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.^[5]

In August 2015, Emerson took a leave of absence from the NRECA for medical reasons and was succeeded by her former congressional chief of staff and chief operating officer, Jeffrey Connor, in an interim capacity in November,^[6] effectively stepping down. In June 2016, fellow former U.S. House colleagueJim Matheson was named to succeed Emerson as CEO^[7] and took over her post in July. In March 2017, Emerson received theClyde T. Ellis Award, the highest honor bestowed on an individual by America's electric cooperatives. On her behalf, her husband, Ron Gladney, accepted the award.^[8]

Hermann married futureU.S. RepresentativeBill Emerson, a Republican from Cape Girardeau, on June 22, 1975. They had two daughters; Jo Ann also has five stepdaughters and a stepson. Bill was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1980 from Missouri's 10th Congressional District and, subsequent to redistricting, was reelected in 1982 from the 8th District. He died from cancer on June 22, 1996, a few months before the end of his eighth term. TheBill Emerson Memorial Bridge, which linksMissouri toIllinois across theMississippi River, was dedicated to commemorate his efforts to obtainfederal funding for its construction.

Following Bill's death, Jo Ann married Ron Gladney in 2000. From this marriage she gained two stepdaughters and a stepson.

In 2015, Emerson had a stroke, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down.^[9] In April 2020, while living in a retirement community in Washington, D.C., she tested positiveCOVID-19 amid thepandemic and has recovered since.^[9][10]

• Women in the United States House of Representatives

• U.S. Congressman Jo Ann Emersonofficial U.S. House website
• Jo Ann Emersonofficial campaign website
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Biography at theBiographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at theFederal Election Commission

• 1950 births
• 20th-century American women politicians
• 20th-century United States representatives
• 20th-century Missouri politicians
• 21st-century American women politicians
• 21st-century United States representatives
• 21st-century Missouri politicians
• American politicians with disabilities
• Female United States representatives
• Independent United States representatives
• Living people
• Members of the United States Congress who became lobbyists
• Missouri independents
• Ohio Wesleyan University alumni
• Politicians with tetraplegia
• Politicians from Bethesda, Maryland
• Republican Party United States representatives from Missouri
• Women in Missouri politics

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from July 2017
• BLP articles lacking sources from August 2010
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• People appearing on C-SPAN