Jones, Brenda B., 1959-

<p>Brenda B. Jones (born October 24, 1959) is an American politician from Michigan. She is the President of the Detroit City Council, to which she was first elected in 2005. Jones briefly served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Michigan's 13th congressional district. She succeeded John Conyers, after winning the 2018 special election to fill the remainder of his term after he resigned in December 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment.</p>

<p>Jones' term began November 6, 2018, and ended at the conclusion of the 115th United States Congress on January 3, 2019. She ran for Congress again in 2020 but lost the Democratic primary to incumbent Rashida Tlaib.</p>

<p>Brenda B. Jones was born on October 24, 1959, in Birmingham, Alabama, and her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, during the Great Migration. She attended public schools in Detroit, where she graduated from Cass Technical High School and later received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Wayne State University. She also earned a Graduate certificate from Wayne State University. Jones worked for Michigan Bell and was later elected as a union president of the Communications Workers of America Local 4004 in Detroit. She was appointed as an executive on the boards of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation and the Detroit Transportation Commission.</p>

JONES, Brenda, a Representative from Michigan; born on October 24, 1959; graduated from Cass Tech High School, Detroit, Mich.; B.A., Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich.; graduate certificate, Wayne State University; trade union president; member of the Detroit, Mich., city council, 2005-present, president, 2014-present; unsuccessful candidate for nomination to the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress in 2018; unsuccessful write-in candidate for election to the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress in 2018; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Fifteenth Congress, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of United States Representative John Conyers, Jr. (November 6, 2018-January 3, 2019); unsuccessful candidate for nomination to the One Hundred Seventeenth Congress in 2020.

<p>In 2018 Detroit city council president Brenda Jones won a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of longtime Representative John Conyers Jr. Conyers’s decision to leave the House in December 2017 set off a complicated electoral process in which Jones won the special election for the 115th Congress (2017–2019) but lost the general election for the 116th Congress (2019–2021) on the same day. Jones’s term on Capitol Hill lasted only six weeks.</p>

<p>Brenda Jones was born on October 24, 1959. Her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, when she was a child, and she graduated from Cass Technical High School. She then earned a bachelor’s degree and a graduate certificate from Wayne State University. Before her political career she worked with and served as president of one of the Detroit-area labor unions.</p>

<p>Jones won her first public office in 2005 as a member of the Detroit city council. She served in city government for more than a decade, and in 2014 the city council elected Jones as its first president; she was re-elected city council president in January 2018. The Detroit Free Press credited her with running “the city’s most professional, least controversial council in recent history.”</p>