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StumbleuponU.S. Rep Tubbs Jones, 58, dies suddenly
Thursday, August 21, 2008
EAST CLEVELAND — U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress and a strong critic of the Iraq war, died Wednesday, Aug. 20, Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Eileen Sheil said.
Tubbs Jones died at 6:12 p.m. after suffering a brain hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm that burst and left her with limited brain function.
"Throughout the course of the day and into this evening, Congresswoman Tubbs Jones' medical condition declined," Sheil said in a statement from the clinic and Tubbs Jones' family.
The liberal Democrat, first elected in 1998, was 58. She suffered the hemorrhage while driving her car in Cleveland Heights Tuesday night, said Dr. Gus Kious, president of Huron Hospital in East Cleveland. The congresswoman had been driving erratically and her vehicle crossed lanes of traffic before coming to a stop, police said.
The aneurysm — a dangerous weakness or bulge in a blood vessel — that burst in an inaccessible part of her brain, Kious said.
Tubbs Jones was one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's biggest boosters during the primaries and was to have been a superdelegate at next week's Democratic National Convention in Denver.
She switched her backing to Sen. Barack Obama in June, but said he could not win unless Clinton's supporters rallied behind him. She also said Obama should consider Clinton as a running mate.
Representing Ohio's heavily Democratic 11th District, Tubbs Jones was the first black woman to serve on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. She chaired the House Ethics Committee.
Tubbs Jones has been a passionate opponent of the war in Iraq, voting in 2002 against authorizing the use of military force.
Just as the war was starting in March 2003, she was one of only 11 House members to oppose a resolution supporting U.S. troops in Iraq.
She said she did so because the resolution connected Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and said Iraq poses a continued threat to the United States.
Neither of those claims had been proved, she said, adding that is the reason the United States couldn't persuade the United Nations to support an attack.
On Ways and Means, she opposed President Bush's tax cuts and his efforts to create personal accounts within Social Security.
In 2005, Tubbs Jones opposed certifying President Bush's re-election because of questionable electoral results in her home state.
