Stephanie Tubbs Jones won election to the United States
House of Representatives in 1998, becoming the first
African-American woman to represent Ohio in Congress.
During her time in the House, Jones became the first Black
woman to serve on the Ways and Means Committee and
was one of the first African-American women to chair a
standing congressional committee—the Committee on
Standards of Official Conduct, commonly known as the
Ethics Committee. In the House, Jones focused on a range of
policies important to her district, including homeownership,
women’s health, and voting rights. “All my life I had wanted
to help others, and I had been active in helping others,” she
said. “I was always interested in service.”1
Stephanie Tubbs Jones was born Stephanie Tubbs in
Cleveland, Ohio, on September 10, 1949, to Mary Tubbs,
a factory worker and cook, and Andrew Tubbs, an airline
skycap. The youngest of three daughters, Jones was raised
in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood and graduated
from Collinwood High School. At Case Western Reserve
University, Jones founded the African American Students
Association and, in 1971, graduated with a bachelor’s degree
in sociology and a minor in psychology. She completed
her law degree at Case Western University Law School in
1974. Jones then served as the assistant general counsel and
the equal opportunity administrator of the northeast Ohio
regional sewer district. She married Mervyn Jones and raised
a son, Mervyn.2
Jones eventually became an assistant Cuyahoga County
prosecutor and trial attorney for the Cleveland district
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When
she and several friends worked on a successful political
campaign in 1979, the group began promoting Jones for
public office. Noting a lack of people of color on the bench,
Jones ran for a local judgeship and won election to the
Cleveland municipal court. Ohio Governor Richard Celeste
then appointed Jones to the Cuyahoga County court of
common pleas, where she served from 1983 to 1991. In
1992, she was elected the Cuyahoga County prosecutor,
making her the state’s first African-American prosecutor and
the only Black woman prosecutor in a major urban area in
the country.3
When Cleveland’s Representative of 30 years, Louis
Stokes, retired in 1998, Jones entered the Democratic
primary to succeed him. Jones told voters that she loved
her job as county prosecutor but that she wanted to do
more for the city. “I got to thinking what could I do for
seniors and children of the 11th District; and not just here,
what could I do to see that every child in this country
has the opportunity to do well,” she said. She ran on her
long record in public office in Cuyahoga County and on
her well-established connection with voters in the district.
Her campaign slogan was simply “You know me.” Jones
quickly became a frontrunner in the race, as did two other
well-known community members: state senator Jeffrey D.
Johnson and Reverend Marvin McMickle. During the
primary, Jones’s opponents told voters that losing her as
prosecutor would be a detriment to the Black community.
But she countered, saying, “With my background as a
criminal justice practitioner, I believe that the Congress will
at least listen to me because I’ve had the experience and I
will be able to speak out on issues that affect criminal justice
in our city and on the national level.” Jones captured the
nomination with 51 percent of the vote and then dominated
the general election with 80 percent. Jones faced no serious
challenges in her four re-elections; she usually won with 75
percent or more of the vote, and ran unopposed in 2004.4
When Jones took her seat in the 106th Congress
(1999–2001), she received assignments on the Banking
and Financial Services Committee (later renamed Financial
Services) and the Small Business Committee. In the 107th
Congress (2001–2003), she picked up a third assignment
to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which
oversees House ethics guidelines for Members and staff. In
the 108th Congress (2003–2005), Jones left the Financial
Services and Small Business Committees to become the first
African-American woman to hold a seat on the prestigious
Ways and Means Committee, which writes and oversees
America’s tax laws.5
Jones’s Ohio district encompassed some of Cleveland’s
wealthiest suburbs as well as neighborhoods struggling
with poverty. On Capitol Hill, she worked to control
predatory mortgages and lending practices. As chair of
the Congressional Black Caucus Housing Task Force, she
facilitated a panel on homeownership at the Congressional
Black Caucus Weekend in 2000. In the 107th Congress,
she introduced the Predatory Mortgage Lending Practice
Reduction Act to abolish certain fees and prevent lenders
from targeting low-income and minority communities with
subprime mortgages, which carried high interest rates. She
routinely re-introduced the bill, and Congress eventually
passed similar legislation amid the financial crisis in 2009
that curbed subprime lending.6
For four straight Congresses—the 107th through
110th Congresses (2001–2009)—Jones joined Maryland
Senator Barbara Ann Mikulski in introducing the Uterine
Fibroids Research and Education Act. The proposal
included funding for research by the National Institutes
of Health and for raising public awareness about the
condition, which statistically affects African-American
women more than others. “Research is needed to find out
what causes uterine fibroids, why African American women
are disproportionately affected, and what can be done to
prevent and treat the condition,” Jones told her colleagues
on the House Floor in 2007. Although the bill never
became law, Jones believed more people learned about the
disease through her legislative efforts.7
Jones also focused on fire safety on college campuses.
Citing a number of deadly fires in the previous decade,
Jones introduced the Campus Fire Prevention Act in the
107th Congress to create a grant program for sprinkler
systems in student housing. She re-introduced it in the
following three Congresses. The bill would have provided
colleges and universities $100 million a year for four years
and directed 10 percent of the funds to “historically Black
colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and
Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities,” as well as
another 10 percent to fraternity and sorority housing. In
2009, Ohio Representative Marcia L. Fudge introduced the
Honorable Stephanie Tubbs Jones College Fire Prevention
Act—the same bill Jones introduced—which passed the
House in May 2010.8
In the lead up to the 2004 presidential election, the
Democratic Party chose Jones to serve as co-chair for
the Democratic National Committee. She told a local
newspaper she was chosen for the role because of her
judicial background and Ohio’s status as a swing state but
mainly because she was “not afraid to speak out” for what
she felt was right. She co-chaired the platform committee,
which held party meetings across the country in order to
fine-tune the Democratic Party’s message. On July 26,
2004, she addressed a crowd at the Democratic National
Convention in Boston touting Senator John Forbes Kerry
of Massachusetts as the nominee.9
After President George W. Bush won re-election in
2004, Jones and a number of her Democratic colleagues
suspected that irregular voting procedures in Ohio—
including registration errors, long lines, malfunctioning
machines, and high ballot rejection rates—had swayed
the state’s results. Jones and a group of Democratic
Members, including John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the
ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, held
unofficial hearings in Washington, DC, and Columbus,
Ohio, in December to gather testimony about Election
Day in Ohio. In 2005, the group published their findings
and recommendations in What Went Wrong in Ohio: The
Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election.10
At the Joint Session of Congress convened on January 6,
2005, to count electoral votes, Jones needed a Senate
colleague to join her in making a formal objection to Ohio’s
electoral vote count. California Senator Barbara Boxer
agreed to pair with Jones to challenge the count—only
the second time since 1887 that a successful objection by
a Representative and a Senator forced an extended debate
in the House and the Senate. At the time of the electoral
count, two lawsuits concerning provisional ballots were
pending in Ohio courts. Jones argued that the state’s
election results should not be certified until those lawsuits
were resolved and that all the voting irregularities should
be addressed by the House in the upcoming Congress. As
the first to speak in the House debate, Jones said, “This
objection does not have at its root the hope or even the
hint of overturning the victory of the President; but it is a
necessary, timely, and appropriate opportunity to review
and remedy the most precious process in our democracy.”
She stressed that her goal was to draw attention to the
problems in the 2004 election as well as voting practices
across the nation. “We go across the world trying to ensure
democracy,” she added, “but there are some problems with
the process in the United States.” Both chambers debated
the objection and ultimately voted to uphold the results:
74 to 1 in the Senate and 267 to 31 in the House.11
The following month, Jones joined Senators Boxer
and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in introducing
the Count Every Vote Act, which proposed wide-ranging
electoral reform. The bill would have declared Election Day
a national holiday, made the distribution of misleading
election information a federal crime, and required a paper
ballot back-up for every electronic vote to be used in the
event of a recount.12
In the 110th Congress (2007–2009), Speaker Nancy
Pelosi of California named Jones chair of the Committee
on Standards of Official Conduct, more commonly known
as the Ethics Committee, despite criticisms that Jones had
used campaign funds for personal purchases and had taken
free flights from special interest groups. With Jones as chair,
the Ethics Committee initiated guidance for Members who
earmarked federal funding—line items in appropriations
bills for specific projects—to avoid conflict of interest
issues, and for Members who flew on private planes. The
committee also began a yearly requirement for all House
staff to complete ethics training.13
Representative Jones died of a brain aneurysm on
August 20, 2008. At the news of her sudden passing, then
Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Barack
Obama stated, “It wasn’t enough for her just to break
barriers in her own life. She was also determined to bring
opportunity to all those who had been overlooked and left
behind.” Jones was succeeded by Marcia Fudge—one of
her former aides and the mayor of Warrensville Heights,
Ohio—in a special election on November 18, 2008.14
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