Marsha Blackburn

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is the frontrunner in the Republican primary for Tennessee governor, leading pols by significant margins until recently.

Blackburn’s campaign focuses on national issues like immigration and China, with many of her proposals already being state law.

A 34-year political veteran, Blackburn would be the first woman and oldest person elected as Tennessee’s governor.

She has declined to debate her GOP rivals and has primarily held private or invitation-only campaign events.

Even before U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn announced her bid for Tennessee governor, polls put her ahead of GOP primary rivals by 30 to 50 percentage points.

Blackburn is Republican establishment royalty.

She is the first woman to represent Tennessee in the U.S. Senate. If elected Tennessee governor, Blackburn would be the first woman to hold that office. At 74, Blackburn would also be the oldest person Tennessee ever elected to that role.

For the last 18 months, political observers have seen her as the likely Republican nominee for governor. She has said she is running to lead Tennessee "through a reset" and make it “America’s conservative leader for this generation and the next.”

Her campaign events have primarily been held at Republican party functions and invitation-only events. Blackburn has not held an open-to-the-public town hall since 2017. She travels to all 95 counties in her official capacity each year, but meetings are not publicly announced or shared with the press. Tele-town halls held by her U.S. Senate office are joinable by invitation only.

Publicly, Blackburn has centered her campaign around issues such as “cracking down” on China, hunting down communists, and deporting “criminal illegal aliens.”

“Two hundred fifty years ago, the battle cry was ‘the British are coming.’ After looking at the results in New York City last week... the battle cry is ‘the communists are coming,’” she told the crowd at the annual GOP Statesmen's Dinner. “As your governor, I will not let them run across our state.”

Many of the policies Blackburn has pitched as key to her campaign are already state laws.

Blackburn has declined to debate her Republican opponents. Her campaign has not responded to multiple interview requests and comment requests from The Tennessean.

Blackburn is a top ally of President Donald Trump, and has touted her relationship with him throughout the campaign. Trump has not endorsed in the GOP primary, and has said he does not intend to.

What is Blackburn’s background?

A Mississippi beauty queen turned marketing consultant who's been in politics for 34 years, Blackburn is a native of Laurel, Mississippi. Born Marsha Wedgeworth, she graduated from Northeast Jones High School in Laurel, about 100 miles north of the Gulf. She participated in beauty pageants in high school, and was named Oil Festival Queen in 1969.

She attended Mississippi State University on a 4-H scholarship, and is a member of the Chi Omega sorority. She graduated in 1974 with a degree in home economics. Viewers can learn how to make her recipe for Chicken Bearnaise or her favorite cookie, Chocolate Chip Amoebas in a video series titled Marsha’s Kitchen on YouTube.

In her early 20s, Blackburn worked in the fashion industry as a model in Dallas. She later became director of Retail Fashion for a Nashville department store.

Before getting into politics, Blackburn got a job as a door-to-door salesperson for Southwestern Company, where her brother worked, selling Bibles and reference books for school-aged children. She also started her own marketing company in Williamson County.

She is married to Chuck Blackburn, and they live in a Brentwood home that once belonged to Minnie Pearl. They have two children, Mary Morgan Ketchel and Chad Blackburn, and several grandchildren, who know her as “Marshie.” Blackburn attends Christ Presbyterian Church in Brentwood.

She’s written several books, including a Christian self-help book titled “Life Equity,” and a children’s book about the women’s suffrage movement, written with her daughter for the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment.

When did Blackburn get started in politics?

Blackburn's political career began in 1992, when she ran for Congress in Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District, losing to incumbent Bart Gordon. She was appointed director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission in 1995 during the administration of Gov. Don Sundquist.

Three years later, she ran for state Senate and won, serving one term in the Democratic-controlled state legislature. She has touted her “successful statewide grassroots campaign” to defeat a state income tax Sundquist proposed in the 1990s. Blackburn worked alongside radio personalities like Steve Gill, Phil Valentine and Dave Ramsey to rally thousands at the Tennessee State Capitol to protest. The event dubbed the Tennessee Tax Revolt led to honking car horns and at one point, a train whistle, disrupting legislative proceedings.

Blackburn ran for Congress again in 2003, and won, defeating now-Congressman David Kustoff and now-state Sen. Brent Taylor in the Republican primary. She served 12 terms in Congress, winning reelection by wide margins in her heavily Republican district.

She ran unsuccessfully for Republican conference chair in 2007, and was an advisor on Sen. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2008.

When U.S. Sen. Bob Corker opted not to run for reelection, Blackburn ran for U.S. Senate in 2018, defeating former Gov. Phil Bredesen.

What is Blackburn’s voting record?

Blackburn has a lifetime voting score of 85% from Heritage Action, and 90% from the Club for Growth Foundation — both lower than rival U.S. Rep. John Rose.

She’s been working to pass a bill to increase internet protections for children – known as the Kids Online Safety Act.

She has sponsored a bill mirroring Tennessee's state law on the federal level to protect singers and songwriters' voices from AI duplication.

Blackburn has been a vocal critic of gender ideology. During confirmation hearings for then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022, Blackburn asked “can you define the word ‘woman?'”

“I think it tells our girls that their voices don’t matter,” she said at the time. “I think it tells them that they’re second-class citizens. And parents want to have a Supreme Court justice who is committed to preserving parental autonomy and protecting our nation’s children.”

In the Senate, Blackburn has proposed 1%, 2% and 5% budget cuts for all areas of the federal government other than defense and homeland security.

She worked to repeal COVID-19 vaccine mandates for military members in 2022.

She has sponsored the Transparency and Effective Accountability Measures for Veteran Caregivers Act to improve the VA caregiver program.

Blackburn has been a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party. After China seized control of the Hong Kong autonomous region in 2019, Blackburn sponsored a bill to bar exports of crowd control equipment to the Hong Kong Police Force, which became law. She’s worked to bolster the U.S.’ relationship with Taiwan, traveling there for an official visit in 2022.

Who has Blackburn taken money from?

Blackburn has raised $8.3 million in donations toward her governor bid. Of that, more than 70% of Blackburn’s donors live outside Tennessee.

PACs have been spending heavily to bolster her. Blackburn has benefitted from more than $2.5 million in PAC spending so far, including $224,000 by Americans for Prosperity State PAC, and another $2.5 million by the D.C.-based Tennessee Freedom Fund.

Tennessee Freedom Fund has a war chest of $4.6 million, funded primarily from D.C.-based donors including other PACs affiliated with Club for Growth. Tennessee Freedom Fund spent $2.3 million on tv ads for Blackburn in June, and another $57,500 on mailers.

Americans for Prosperity’s state PAC has paid for more than $200,000 in canvassing efforts, and $24,375 on doorhangers for Blackburn. The group has knocked on nearly 150,000 doors for Blackburn. The PAC is funded entirely by contributions from Americans for Prosperity, the political action group of libertarian petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch.

Altogether, more than $100 million has boosted Blackburn’s political career from state senate through her 13 terms in the U.S. Congress, and now her gubernatorial campaign, according to an analysis by the Tennessee Lookout.

Her biggest backers in the governor’s race are Club for Growth and its affiliated PACs, and Americans for Prosperity Action. Blackburn is also backed by for-profit prison operator CoreCivic, auto parts billionaire Willis Johnson, and payday lender Advance Financial. The American Israel Political Action Committee has donated nearly half a million dollars to her campaigns throughout her career.

What would Blackburn do if elected?

Blackburn has said she's seeking the governor's office instead of finishing four years of her Senate term because Trump is shifting power back to the states. Her platform covers the touchstones of the GOP base: pro-gun, pro-life views with pledges for tax cuts and job recruitment.

Blackburn has pitched “a conservative reset” for Tennessee. She wants to oversee a “Tennessee DOGE” – alluding to the bureaucracy-cutting efforts of the second Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. She has not said publicly what departments, initiatives, or programs she feels should be eliminated. Gov. Bill Lee has cut 366 agency staff positions since 2019.

“Marsha’s got a big red marker. And we’re going to start marking through things in that state budget, and get that state budget under control,” she said during a speech to the Republican Statesmen's Dinner in Nashville.

Blackburn asked voters to support Amendment 2 in November to “make sure we never have a state property tax,” pledging to "double down on keeping taxes low." Tennessee has not collected a state property tax since 1949, and no one from either party is proposing to create one.

On private school vouchers, Blackburn has pledged to "expand the program until no parent has to win the lottery to have a say in their child's education."

Her website pledges to "cut taxes to bolster our economy," but does not specify what taxes she plans to reduce. Tennessee's 4% state tax on groceries is one of the highest in the country, and has been a topic of proposed reductions for years in the state legislature. After trimming the size of state government, Blackburn has said she will see "if a grocery tax cut is feasible."

Despite 80% of Tennesseans supporting medical marijuana legalization, Blackburn has said she supports the state's current cannabis ban. Tennessee is one of 9 states that has not legalized medical marijuana, and one of 26 that has not legalized recreational cannabis.

"Marijuana, its addictive nature, and its other troubling effects have no place in Tennessee," Blackburn has said.

Many policies Blackburn said she wants to accomplish are already state laws.

She said she will make Tennessee “number one when it comes to fighting China,” saying “China cannot buy our land. China cannot buy our businesses.” In her first campaign ad, Blackburn pledged to "crack down on China," while smashing fortune cookies. In recent years, lawmakers made it a crime for foreign adversarial nations (including China) and entities under their control to purchase Tennessee farmland.

Blackburn said she would make Tennessee “the No. 1 state when it comes to deporting criminal illegal aliens.” This spring, Tennessee lawmakers worked directly with the White House to pass a slate of bills drafted to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda on the state level — something Trump praised when visiting Memphis. For the last two years, Republican lawmakers have sought to bar undocumented children from public schools. Blackburn has said that children in the United States unlawfully "should not have free access to our public schools or any public services in Tennessee."

Her website lists "protecting women's sports" as a top priority. Lawmakers barred transgender athletes from competing in interscholastic sports in 2022. Last year, lawmakers required public and private overnight facilities to be assigned based on "immutable biological sex." Tennessee was the first state in the country to require businesses to post a sign if they allow transgender individuals to use multiperson restrooms or changing rooms that do not align with their biological sex.

Blackburn also said she wants to see violent criminals on death row executed more quickly, to "give these victims' families closure."

Blackburn has said she will work to “recruit jobs: growing jobs, technology jobs, healthcare jobs, energy jobs.” In addition to its full budget and recruitment staff, Tennessee’s Economic and Community Development department has spent $758 million in direct FastTrak grants to recruit jobs to Tennessee since 2018. Tennessee also has a dedicated grant program to fund nuclear workforce development.

Blackburn has taken aim at Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, attacking Metro Nashville's $735,000 grant to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition – a group that offers legal services to Nashvillians born abroad – as “using your taxpayer dollars to prop up illegal alien groups.”

She said “protecting life, protecting our children” are among her top priorities. She is known across the country for championing the federal Kids Online Safety Act. She said that “if you are molesting and raping our babies – you need the death penalty.” Lawmakers made rape and aggravated rape a capital crime in Tennessee in 2024, and expanded on that law this year.

Blackburn said she wants to see “more charter schools, more school choice.” Tennessee’s Public Charter School commission, created in 2019, has the power to override local school board votes barring charter school establishment. Lawmakers expanded Tennessee’s statewide private school choice voucher program this year.

Blackburn has not publicly revealed plans to address two looming crises: Tennessee's $58 billion backlog of unfunded road projects, and the 12% of Tennesseans who are uninsured and struggle to afford health care. While she acknowledges that "infrastructure hasn't kept up with growth," Blackburn has not offered a plan to address traffic problems. Health insurance costs, access to care and rural hospital closures are not mentioned on her website.