Mary Jo Kilroy

Mary Jo Kilroy (born April 30, 1949) is an American attorney and politician who served as the U.S. representative for OH's 15th congressional district from 2009 until 2011.

She is a member of the Democratic Party from Ohio.

She earned her bachelor's degree in political science from Cleveland State University in 1977 and her J.D. from Ohio State University in 1980.

Prior to practicing law as a partner with her husband at the plaintiffs law firm of Handelman and Kilroy, Kilroy was a social worker, hospital technician and tutor.

In 1988, as chairman of her local branch of the National Lawyers Guild, Kilroy signed a letter urging Columbus Mayor Dana G. Rinehart to support an order in favor of creating an equal employment opportunity chief to handle race relations issues in the Columbus Division of Police.

In 1991, she ran for an eighteen-person contest for four Columbus School Board seats on a platform that included proposing to lengthen the scholastic day from six and a half hours to eight.

Kilroy was one of four candidates to receive the endorsement of the Franklin County Democratic Party.

On November 5, 1991, she placed behind incumbent Columbus School Board President, Sharlene Morgan, natural resources expert Robert Teater, past board member Bill Moss, which made her the fourth among the eighteen candidates and the final elected member.

By her second year on the seven-member board, she was a unanimous selection to be second in command as Columbus School Board Vice President.

She was unanimously re-elected the following year.

In her fourth year of service on the board beginning on January 3, 1995, she lost a 4–3 election for Columbus School Board President when the incumbent, Robert W. Teater, cast a tie-breaking vote for himself.

She subsequently declined the vice presidency.

During her fourth year, she unsuccessfully attempted to include a sexual orientation policy in the school district's nondiscrimination policy that would protect homosexuals.

She was reelected in 1995.

In 1996, she contested Ohio's 16th district seat in the Ohio State Senate with Eugene Watts, but she lost by a 51.80–37.46% margin in a five-way contest.

Still on the school board, she resumed her vice presidency on January 5, 1998.

She ascended to the Columbus School Board President position for her eighth year of service to the board on January 4, 1999.

During this eighth year, she decided not to run for re-election to a third term in order to spend more time with her family.

On January 6, 2000, she won one of the Franklin County Democratic Party's two nominations for one of two seats to the three-member Board of County Commissioners.

The board oversees the Franklin County government's $1.3 billion budget and programs that range from child welfare to job training to minor league baseball.

On November 7, 2000, she became the first Democrat elected as a Franklin County Commissioner in eight years.

She won by a 48–47% margin by capturing 55 of 74 wards and 90% of the vote in six inner-city wards.

In her re-election she won by a 28,500 vote margin, which was substantially more than the 4,300 vote margin in 2000.

During both elections, she won despite being widely outspent.

She served as the Board's lone Democrat until she was re-elected to a second four-year term and Paula Brooks was elected on November 2, 2004, to give Democrats the majority for the first time in twenty years.

She assumed the role of Board President on January 10, 2005.

Governing magazine named Franklin County as being among the five best-managed counties in the country during Kilroy's tenure.

Also, Kilroy was named the Public Official of the Year by the Central Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers as a result of her role in creating the Columbus/Franklin County Affordable Housing Trust.

Her term as commissioner was not without controversy, however.

In both the 2006 and 2008 United States House of Representatives elections, Kilroy was involved in close elections for Ohio's 15th congressional district.

She lost in 2006 after an election that required the counting of absentee ballots and election recounts.

However, after the incumbent retired, she won a similarly close election in 2008.

In both cases, she was behind after the Election Day vote tabulations, but made up significant ground with belated absentee ballot voting results.

She was defeated in her November 2, 2010 re-election bid.

The 2010 election race was widely followed in the mainstream press as a race that the Republicans were targeting.

Born in Euclid, Ohio, Kilroy grew up in Cleveland.

The daughter of a pipe fitter, she paid her way through college by working at hospitals, as a waitress and as a counselor.

In 2012, she ran in the newly redrawn, Columbus-based 3rd congressional district but lost in the primary.

She is an attorney and a former two-term County Commissioner of Franklin County, Ohio, which includes the capital city of Columbus and some of its surrounding suburban and rural areas.

Previously, she served two four-year terms on the Columbus School Board after working in private practice.