Horn, Joan Kelly, 1936-

<p>Joan Kelly Horn (born October 18, 1936) is an American politician from Missouri. She served one term in the United States House of Representatives representing Missouri's 2nd congressional district. She is a member of the Democratic Party.</p>

<p>She was elected to Congress in 1990, upsetting incumbent Republican Jack Buechner by 54 votes in a district that included most of St. Louis' western suburbs, such as Florissant, St. Charles, and Town and Country. Earlier in 1990, the Democratic-controlled Missouri state legislature approved a new congressional district map that was intended to preserve heavy Democratic majorities in the two districts that included St. Louis itself — the 1st, represented by Democrat Bill Clay and the 3rd, represented by then-House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In the process, the legislature shifted most of the heavily Democratic areas of the 2nd to the 1st and 3rd.</p>

<p>However, the new map had been drawn well before the elections, and no one had anticipated Horn's upset win over Buechner. Horn realized the new map put her in serious electoral trouble, and asked that the map be redrawn, even requesting a sliver of St. Louis. However, Clay and Gephardt turned her down. In November 1992, Horn was narrowly defeated by Republican State House Minority Leader Jim Talent. She was defeated in a rematch against Talent in 1996.</p>

<p>In her first attempt at elected office, Joan Kelly Horn earned a spot in the 102nd Congress (1991–1993) by securing an upset victory against a two-term incumbent. During her short tenure in the U.S. House, she focused on the needs of her district by channeling federal money into a series of local projects in her home state of Missouri. Representing an area once described as politically “the most unstable district in the state,” Horn became part of a pattern of party turnover when she lost her bid for re-election to her Republican opponent in 1992.</p>

<p>The daughter of an advertising executive, Horn was born on October 18, 1936, in St. Louis, Missouri. After graduating from the Visitation High School in St. Louis in 1954, she attended St. Louis University. She left school in 1956 to marry after completing three semesters. Joan Kelly Horn worked part-time as a Montessori teacher while she raised her six children: Michael, Matthew, Kelly, Stephen, Mark, and Kara. She later resumed her education, earning a BA and an MA in political science from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, in 1973 and 1975, respectively. In 1987 Horn married her second husband, E. Terrence Jones, a dean at the University of Missouri at St. Louis who had one son from a previous marriage. The couple divorced in 1999.</p>

<p>Upon the completion of her academic studies, Horn worked on a variety of local projects encompassing education, conservation, and community development. She also was active in the local Democratic Party and led both the Missouri Women’s Political Caucus and the Freedom of Choice Council. In 1987 Horn became committeewoman of the Clayton Township of Missouri. She also served as a political consultant in a firm she operated with her husband.</p>