Former Denton County Judge Mary Horne has died. Horne has served as a county judge since June 2002. She has worked as a tax assessor and tax collector for Denton County for over 10 years.
How did Mary Horn die?
Former Denton County Judge Mary Horne has died. Denton County shared the devastating news on Facebook.
Maryhorn’s funeral arrangements will be made public by the family.
Mary Horne cause of death
Mary Horn’s cause of death has not been made public. There is no information on Maryhorn’s cause of death. We will update you on Maryhorn’s cause of death once we have information from the correct sources.
Who is Mary Horn?
Beginning in 1993, Mary Horn served as the county’s tax assessor and collector prior to her election as a county judge. When she recounts events during her tenure in the role, she occasionally refers to county initiatives in the first person.
In other words, “Basically, I did for all these jurisdictions what the appraisal district did, but they were charged $2 there, and I — I said ‘I’ — the county charged $55 cents.”
As the County Tax Assessor, Horne advanced the interests of Denton County by successfully enacting nine pieces of state legislation that improved the lives of all Texans and reduced tax expenditures for local governments, educational institutions, and county citizens. Horne received honorary lifetime membership from the association for his service to the industry and was named Tax Assessor of the Year by the Society of Tax Assessors in 1999.
She spent the last 16 years as a Denton County judge. Horne’s closest colleagues now jokingly refer to her as “The Queen of Dentonshire”.
When she and her husband, Jim Horne, a longtime Denton County representative in the Texas House of Representatives, entered politics in the 1970s, the district had few Republican elected officials.
In 1980, when Denton County had only one House representative, Jim Horn won his first election. There are currently four Texas House districts in the county. After Horn’s election, Denton County began to trend red with the help of newly registered voters in the Carrollton area.
About a decade after Jim’s election, Mary reentered the political arena, using the network of supporters and close acquaintances she and Jim had cultivated during the campaign to help her win the position of tax assessor and collector. She was appointed a Denton County judge in 2002 after winning the Republican primary and the incumbent Democratic judge resigned to find another job.
Under Horne’s direction, the commissioners’ court made progress in resolving the ongoing Confederate statue controversy. Commissioners formed a formal committee whose sole purpose was to address the memorial. County officials have been ordered to find old county records about the monument. During the lengthy discussions at the Commissioners’ Court, many people demonstrated against the monument in open court and in the court yard.
After Horne left office, the county made no physical changes to the statue’s structure, neither removing the statue nor adding historical markers that would provide a larger context for the Confederacy’s impact on slavery and American society.