Obama, Clintons pay tribute to Tubbs Jones

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U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones

Associated Press

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COMING TOGETHER: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, right, sites on the stage with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and her husband, former president Clinton, during the memorial service for Rep. Stephanie Jones, D-Ohio. The ceremony was Saturday at the Cleveland Convention Center.

CLEVELAND (AP) — One-time rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton praised Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones as a colleague, pioneer and — as Obama put it — “still a home girl,” during a memorial service Saturday.

Former President Clinton, making unscheduled remarks at the Cleveland service, also paid tribute to one his family’s closest advocates and advisers. The undertone of the service for Ohio’s first black woman elected to Congress quickly became about Obama, who is seeking to become the country’s first black president.

“If this work was hard or overwhelming, if she ever felt any loneliness in so often being the first, you never would’ve known it,” Obama said. “Because Stephanie was not a complainer. She always had that big smile, even when times were tough. Self-pity was never an option as far as Stephanie was concerned.”

The 58-year-old Tubbs Jones died Aug. 20 from a brain hemorrhage caused by a ruptured aneurysm. She was the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress, as well as the state’s first black woman to be a county judge and prosecutor.

Tubbs Jones tirelessly worked to help Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failed presidential bid, something Obama himself acknowledged. She helped Clinton target black voters and Southern voters. As Clinton’s campaign appeared to be in its final stages, Tubbs Jones redoubled her effort to defend the former first lady.

“The mayor said she was not a fair-weather friend. I certainly know what that means,” said Clinton.

Obama said loyalty kept Tubbs Jones in Clinton’s corner.

“During this most recent contest, Stephanie and I started off on different sides and she — we would see each other and she just said to me, ‘This is what it means to be a friend for me,’” Obama said. “And all I could say is ‘I understand.’”

Tubbs Jones represented Ohio’s heavily Democratic 11th District for five terms. She was the first black woman to serve on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and the first to serve as a common pleas judge in Ohio.

Tubbs Jones, who chaired the House Ethics Committee, was 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 studied sociology at Case Western Reserve University on a full scholarship that she attributed to affirmative-action efforts. After graduating, she worked for the city sewer district and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Tubbs Jones was also elected Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge and county prosecutor before running for Congress.

Former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes made Tubbs Jones his hand-picked successor in 1998.

Stokes, the state’s first black man elected to Congress, paid tribute to his successor and to Obama: “Senator, I am 83 years old. Two days ago, you provided me and many in this nation the opportunity to see something that we thought we would never in our lifetime [see].”

Her friends noted that Tubbs Jones could be irreverent — she lovingly called Rep. Tim Ryan her “white son” — and she routinely made her congressional staff traditional Southern meals.

“What struck me most about Stephanie was how, even after a decade in Congress, she was so utterly unaffected by the ways of Washington,” Obama said. “She was still a home girl. Stephanie couldn’t put on airs if she tried.”

Bill Clinton, who sat next to his wife during the program, took the podium for unscheduled remarks that set the room to its feet.