 In the 1992 House of Representatives election, Talent defeated Bert Walker, the cousin of then-president George H. W. Bush and won the Republican nomination for the state's 2nd Congressional District, based in St. Louis's western suburbs.He went on to defeat Democratic incumbent Joan Kelly Horn in the general election, despite being heavily outspent.The district had been altered after the 1990 census to preserve large Democratic majorities in the neighboring of Bill Clay and of Dick Gephardt.