Thomas Charles Horne was born on March 28,1945 and is an American attorney, politician, and Republican activist who served as the 25th Attorney General of Arizona from 2011 to 2015.
35 Facts About Tom Horne
2.
Tom Horne lost to Mark Brnovich in the Republican primary for Attorney General in 2014.
3.
Tom Horne previously served as the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2003 to 2011.
4.
Tom Horne was elected to another term as Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2022.
5.
Tom Horne is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
6.
Tom Horne served as a teacher of Legal Writing at Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and is the author a legal text on construction law published by the State Bar of Arizona.
7.
Tom Horne served on the board of the Paradise Valley Unified School District for 24 years, including 10 as board chair.
8.
Tom Horne served in the Arizona House of Representatives from 1997 until 2001.
9.
Tom Horne chaired the Academic Accountability Committee and served as vice-chair of the Education Committee.
10.
In September 2006, Tom Horne announced a partnership with History Education and The History Channel to implement a statewide social studies initiative.
11.
Tom Horne said a review of nationwide research on the issue showed that all-day programs appeared to reduce the achievement gap between students from poor households and those from more affluent homes.
12.
Tom Horne said that children who come to school speaking a language other than English benefit.
13.
Tom Horne pushed for nutritional standards that removed junk food from schools in the elementary grades and created incentives for secondary schools to do so on a voluntary basis.
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Tom Horne, a classically trained pianist and founder of the Phoenix Baroque Ensemble, was an advocate of increasing arts education in schools.
15.
Tom Horne oversaw the development of a dual-purpose assessment that was unique in combining assessments on both state and nationally defined standards.
16.
Tom Horne continued to implement the Arizona Instrument to Measure Success test, which was created by Lisa Graham Keegan and approved by the legislature in the 1990s, but did not go into effect until 2006.
17.
Tom Horne created an incentive program whereby students who exceeded standards on the AIMS test and met other criteria received tuition scholarships to Arizona's public universities.
18.
Tom Horne sought to address curriculum matters as they related to ethnic studies.
19.
Tom Horne was alerted to the La Raza ethnic studies program in the Tucson Unified School District and, based on a review of the curriculum, championed a law to address what he viewed as the problems these materials presented.
20.
On November 2,2010, Tom Horne defeated Felecia Rotellini in the race for Arizona Attorney General in the 2010 elections.
21.
Shortly after winning the 2010 election, Tom Horne announced that he wanted the office "to do more in the way of consumer protection, even when the cases are small", pursuing violations of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act.
22.
On February 19,2012, Tom Horne announced Arizona had reached agreement to join a $25 billion agreement with the nation's five largest mortgage servicers over abuse and fraud allegations.
23.
On December 4,2014, Tom Horne, announced that $230,000 of the $3.8 million settlement would go to affected Arizona consumers.
24.
In 2013 Tom Horne wrote an opinion that defended the state preemption of regulation of firearms; he found that Tucson's city gun laws were unenforceable.
25.
In 2012 Tom Horne proposed that a principal or a designee be trained and armed in each school.
26.
Tom Horne threatened to sue the city of Bisbee, Arizona, over a 2013 ordinance recognizing same-sex couples.
27.
Tom Horne withdrew the threat several days later when Bisbee agreed to rewrite the ordinance, removing rights reserved for married couples under Arizona law.
28.
In October, 2014, a federal judge ruled that Arizona's law banning gay marriage was unconstitutional, and Tom Horne did not appeal.
29.
Tom Horne filed a 2013 lawsuit that compelled the Maricopa County Community College District to end its policy of in-state tuition for "dreamers".
30.
In 2012 Tom Horne allocated $420,000 to the Mohave County Sheriff's Office to patrol Colorado City.
31.
In October 2012, after an FBI investigation, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery concluded that Tom Horne deliberately broke campaign finance laws during his 2010 election campaign by coordinating with an independent expenditure committee run by Kathleen Winn.
32.
On July 5,2017, Tom Horne was absolved of any wrongdoing by Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, to whom the Attorney General's Office referred the case for the final administrative decision.
33.
On July 7,2014, the Arizona Secretary of State's Office released a memo, finding probable cause that Tom Horne violated several campaign-finance laws related to allegations that Tom Horne had employees doing his campaign work on state time, at the AG's office.
34.
Tom Horne was married to his wife, Martha, for 47 years.
35.
In October 2007, while State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne was cited for criminal speeding in Scottsdale, Arizona.