John Rose

U.S. Rep. John Rose is running for Tennessee governor in the Republican primary against U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and state Rep. Monty Fritts.

Rose is running as a political outsider. He is a farmer and business owner, and has served in Congress since 2019. He briefly served as state agriculture commissioner.

His campaign priorities include addressing Tennessee’s road infrastructure crisis, improving education, expanding rural health care access and bolstering nuclear energy production.

He has consistently polled behind Blackburn but loaned his campaign $9 million to increase name recognition.

In Congress, he has sponsored bills to protect homebuyer's personal information and increase the supply of affordable manufactured housing.

It’s been 17 months since U.S. Rep. John Rose stood alongside a 1944 John Deere tractor in a light falling sleet to announce his bid for Tennessee governor at the Wilson County Fairgrounds — the site of the state fair he worked 12 years to save.

An underdog running to take on U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn in the GOP primary, Rose had a long road to build name recognition. So he started before anyone else.

Over the last year and a half, Rose appears to have spent the most face-to-face time with average voters of any gubernatorial candidate. He’s had campaign events in each of Tennessee’s 95 counties and held more than 45 in-person town halls to take questions from voters.

He’s done dozens of interviews with reporters, participated in numerous candidate forums and called on Blackburn to debate for the last 10 months.

Rose has said he wants to build on the work conservative Republican governors before him have accomplished. His priorities are improving school quality, revitalizing road infrastructure to alleviate traffic burdens, making emergency medical care more accessible in every county, and continuing to position Tennessee as a leader in nuclear energy.

He’s said he’s learned voters are looking for “a governor who listens.”

“They’re done with Washington politicians who come in, give a scripted speech, take scripted questions and give scripted responses,” he said in a recent speech at the Republican Statesmen’s Dinner in Nashville, taking a swing at Blackburn.

Rose, 61, has served in Congress since 2019. Before that, he was in the private sector running his own IT training business, Boson Software LLC. He briefly served as agriculture commissioner under Gov. Don Sundquist until 2003, overseeing policy for the farms that make up 40% of the state's land.

Rose has consistently polled behind Blackburn, even before she announced her candidacy.

But recent internal polling released by his campaign showed he's closing the gap, within 15 points of Blackburn. The poll showed Rose ahead among voters who had heard or read about him.

The poll, conducted by the McLaughlin & Associates firm used by President Donald Trump, surveyed 600 likely voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4%.

What is Rose’s background?

Rose was born and raised in Cookeville and can trace his Tennessee roots back eight generations. He holds a degree in agribusiness economics from Tennessee Technological University, a master’s degree in agricultural economics from Purdue University and a law degree from Vanderbilt University.

He founded Boson Software LLC, an IT training business, in 2005 and remains the company’s president. He also owns a 230-year-old farm in Temperance Hall, west of Cookeville.

Prior to running for Congress, he was volunteer chairman of the Tennessee State Fair Association for 12 years. The group is credited with saving the 100-year-old state fair, which is now held on the Wilson County-State Fairgrounds.

He was in leadership roles with the Tennessee FFA Foundation from 1996 to 2014, serving as chairman for five years.

He married Chelsea Doss in 2011. They have two school-aged children, Sam and Guy, who went viral in 2024 for making silly faces while his father gave a House floor speech.

"This is what I get for telling my son Guy to smile at the camera for his little brother," Rose joked afterward.

The family attends Jefferson Avenue Church of Christ in Cookeville.

When did Rose get started in politics?

Rose has framed himself as a “political outsider.”

He had little experience in politics prior to his first run for Congress in 2018. He was appointed by Republican Gov. Don Sundquist to lead the Tennessee Department of Agriculture in 2002 and served until the end of Sundquist’s term in January 2003.

In 2018, Rose ran for Congress and was elected to fill the 6th District seat left vacant by Diane Black, who ran for governor.

For his chief of staff, Rose hired former U.S. Rep. Van Hilleary, who narrowly lost to Phil Bredesen in the 2002 governor’s race. Rose sits on the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Financial Services.

He was reelected in 2020, 2022 and 2024 with the endorsement of Trump; the president has not endorsed in the governor’s race and has said he does not intend to.

Rose has said his executive experience leading a company sets him apart from his rivals.

“The job of being governor of this state is fundamentally a leadership job, but it's about managing a large enterprise,” he said in September. “The experiences I've had serving in Congress, they don't equip me to be your next governor.”

What is Rose’s voting record?

In Congress, Rose has sponsored bills aimed at making housing more affordable and streamlining the homebuying process, among other priorities.

He was the primary sponsor of the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, which Trump signed into law on Sept. 5, 2025. The bill restricts credit bureaus from sharing or selling homebuyers' personal information with competing lenders when mortgage credit inquiries are made. The policy is designed to dramatically reduce the number of unwanted calls that follow applying for a mortgage.

He's also introduced the Housing Supply Expansion Act to end the federal requirement for mobile homes to include permanently installed in an effort to lower construction costs and offer more locations for affordable homes.

Rose voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. He has touted that vote as one for election integrity in a taxpayer-funded mailer Rose sent to constituents.

“On Jan. 6, I made a commitment to [Trump] and to the people of this country, but most importantly to the people of Tennessee that I would stand up for election integrity,” Rose said at the Statesmen's Dinner. “Some faltered. Some did not keep their word. But I kept my word, and I voted for President Donald Trump.”

In June 2021, Rose was one of 21 House Republicans who opposed a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to U.S. Capitol Police officers who were on duty during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

He has been a strong critic of a provision that would have allowed eight U.S. senators whose phone records were investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice in a probe surrounding the Jan. 6 events to sue the federal government for millions in damages. Tennessee’s Sens. Blackburn and Bill Hagerty were both targets of the probe. The provision was added in a shutdown-ending funding package in 2025.

Rose has a 100% lifetime voting score from the conservative think tank Heritage Action. Blackburn’s lifetime score is 88%.

Rose also holds a 92% lifetime score from free market activist group Club for Growth, which has endorsed Blackburn for governor despite her holding a lower lifetime score.

Who has Rose taken money from?

Rose has loaned his campaign $9 million.

Rose spent $7.2 million in the last quarter, with his highest costs being TV airtime, mailers and digital ads.

Rose has taken some contributions from out of state, but 97% of his donors live inside Tennessee. Only a dozen of Rose’s donors are from outside the state. Their contributions totaled about $6,700 last quarter.

What would Rose do if elected?

Rose has focused his campaign on the state’s practical needs. While he holds conservative positions on social issues like abortion, gun rights and immigration, he is not pushing for major changes in those areas.

While Blackburn has said she is running to lead Tennessee "through a reset" and make it “America’s conservative leader for this generation and the next," Rose has said the next governor shouldn’t be “trying to remake Tennessee into some other mold.” He has pledged to safeguard the state’s low taxes, low debt, low regulations and Christian values, which he says were won by years of strong conservative leadership.

"It's up to us to maintain the character of this great state and to grow wisely,” he said during his campaign launch.

He plans to tackle Tennessee’s road and traffic problems, seek to improve public education, reverse rural hospital closures and continue to make Tennessee a national leader in nuclear energy. He also said he would expand agricultural education and supports making Tennessee "a true constitutional carry state."

Rose launched his campaign with an ambitious plan to expand every interstate in Tennessee to at least eight lanes and to build four-lane highways to every county seat in the state. He acknowledges fixing the state’s looming road problem will be expensive.

Would he consider a tax increase?

“There is really one way to pay for roads: People pay for them,” Rose said, noting under the current system one-third of road costs are paid by non-Tennesseans driving through the state. “I think we have to have a conversation about it and decide, do we want to continue to fall behind, or do we want to catch up?”

During a recent Young Republicans forum in Knoxville, Rose pointed to the $80 to $90 billion in unfunded infrastructure needs across the state, a figure supported by data from the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, He said the state’s next governor “has to make a particular concerted effort to take on this problem.”

The son of a public school teacher, education is a high priority. He supports offering parents more school options but will focus on getting public education right, “because that’s where 90% of our graduates are going to come from,” Rose said at a fish fry fundraiser at his family farm in Lancaster.

“We spend more on education per pupil than any country in the world, and yet, we're not getting the results,” Rose said. “It's not just about money. Money is important and resources are important ― we want to make sure that our teachers are properly rewarded. … But we've also got to be cognizant of the fact that probably some of the things that we do in public education … are not the most efficient ways to pursue successful public education.”

Rose's first campaign promise is to appoint an education commissioner with "Tennessee teaching experience" ― a reference to Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who is not certified to teach in Tennessee and whose experience is overwhelmingly policy focused.

Rose has criticized the Lee administration’s recent $30 million incentive to Starbucks and pledged not to use state funds to “incentivize one of the most woke companies in all of this country” to relocate to Tennessee and bring their liberal values with them.

Rose also wants to reverse Tennessee’s crisis of rural hospital closures. He plans to improve access to health care by working toward the goal that no resident is "more than 30 minutes away from emergency medical care" and making care "available in every county in Tennessee."

Rose has also pledged to work on nuclear energy development, support vulnerable children by improving the Department of Children's Services, defend Tennesseans' Second Amendment rights, work with the legislature on pro-life policies and make Tennessee "a national leader when it comes to making adoption attainable for Tennessee families."