40 Fun Facts About Marsha Blackburn

Which pop star broke a long political silence in 2018 to oppose Marsha Blackburn's run for the Senate?

Taylor Swift told her Instagram followers she would vote for the Democrat instead, a decision later shown in her documentary Miss Americana.

Asked by Marsha Blackburn to define the word woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson replied she was not a what?

Biologist was the job Jackson said she lacked when declining to answer at her 2022 hearings; Blackburn went on to vote against her confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Which TV science presenter debated Marsha Blackburn about climate change on a Sunday political talk show in 2014?

Bill Nye, the Science Guy of children's television, met her on NBC's Meet the Press, where the host corrected Blackburn's claim that scientists had reached no consensus.

Which 2023 film did Marsha Blackburn criticize over a cartoon map said to show China's disputed sea claims?

Barbie shows a doodled world map that critics said traced the nine-dash line, China's contested claim to the South China Sea; the studio called it a child-like crayon drawing.

In 2026, Marsha Blackburn became the first woman to win Tennessee's Republican nomination for which office?

Governor was the prize: her August 2026 primary win made her the first woman nominated for the office by Tennessee Republicans, a year to the day after she entered the race.

In which neighboring state was Marsha Blackburn, the first woman Tennessee sent to the U.S. Senate, born?

Mississippi was her starting point: she was born in the town of Laurel in 1952 and stayed in the state for university before settling near Nashville.

For which international award did Marsha Blackburn nominate Donald Trump after his negotiations with North Korea?

Nobel Peace Prize nominations can come from any member of a national legislature, which is how a House member was able to put a sitting president forward.

Which island did Marsha Blackburn visit in August 2022, meeting President Tsai Ing-wen weeks after Nancy Pelosi's trip?

Taiwan was more than a courtesy stop: Blackburn pointedly called the island a country and an independent nation, a description Beijing rejects.

What job did Marsha Blackburn do for the Southwestern Company while studying for her university degree?

Selling books door-to-door made her one of the company's first female representatives in the South, and she helped it organize an all-female sales division.

Marsha Blackburn chaired a House select panel formed after undercover videos targeted which health care organization?

Planned Parenthood was accused in the videos of selling fetal tissue; later investigations found no evidence of such sales, and Washington Post and Los Angeles Times editorials called the panel's inquiry a witch hunt.

Which Democrat, a former mayor of Nashville, did Marsha Blackburn defeat to win her Senate seat in 2018?

Phil Bredesen had already won two statewide elections and polled level with her for months, yet Blackburn finished nearly eleven points ahead.

Which former Chattanooga mayor's retirement opened the Senate seat that Marsha Blackburn won in 2018?

Bob Corker, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in September 2017 that he would not seek a third term, and Blackburn entered the race the following month.

Which former U.S. Education Secretary's retirement in 2021 made Marsha Blackburn the senior senator from Tennessee?

Lamar Alexander stepped down after three Senate terms, so Blackburn became her state's senior senator only two years after arriving in the chamber.

Which Tennessee legislator, who survived a 2023 expulsion vote by one vote, did Marsha Blackburn defeat in 2024?

Gloria Johnson, a retired special education teacher from Knoxville, faced Blackburn in the first Tennessee Senate race in which both major parties nominated women.

Polls had Marsha Blackburn's 2018 Senate race tied until she pulled ahead after which Supreme Court nominee's hearings?

Brett Kavanaugh's bitter confirmation fight was widely thought to have fired up Republican voters in Tennessee, and Blackburn went on to carry all but three counties.

Marsha Blackburn was floated as a running mate for Donald Trump in 2024 before he chose which fellow senator?

JD Vance, then a first-term senator from Ohio, got the nod at the party convention, and Blackburn won a second Senate term of her own that November.

Which grassroots conservative cause that rose in Barack Obama's first term counts Marsha Blackburn as a supporter?

Tea Party activists demanded lower spending and smaller government from 2009, themes Blackburn had campaigned on since she first entered Congress years earlier.

Which health insurance law did Marsha Blackburn spend years trying to repeal, calling the failure a disgrace?

Affordable Care Act repeal collapsed in the Senate in 2017, and Blackburn pointed to that failure when she announced her own run for the upper chamber a few months later.

Which internet rule did Marsha Blackburn, chair of a House telecoms subcommittee, oppose and call socialistic?

Net neutrality bars broadband providers from favoring some web traffic over the rest, and Blackburn also fought city-run broadband networks that compete with private carriers.

When announcing her 2018 Senate campaign, Marsha Blackburn said she carries what in her purse?

A gun in her purse was one boast among several in the announcement, where she also called herself politically incorrect and welcomed being labeled a wingnut by liberals.

Marsha Blackburn graduated from university in the 1970s with a Bachelor of Science degree in which subject?

Home economics was her major, and she led the Associated Women Students as president before starting a career in retail marketing and event promotion.

A scholarship from which rural youth organization took Marsha Blackburn to university in the early 1970s?

4-H, the club network whose four-leaf clover stands for head, heart, hands and health, awarded her the scholarship she studied on.

From 1995 to 1997, Marsha Blackburn led a Tennessee state commission promoting which group of industries?

Film, entertainment and music were the commission's brief, and the appointment was her first job in public service after years of running a marketing business.

In the Tennessee Senate in 2000, Marsha Blackburn won attention by leading the fight against which proposal?

A state income tax was defeated after a statewide grassroots campaign that she helped lead, and the fight gave her a lasting reputation as an anti-tax champion.

Which leadership post did Marsha Blackburn reach in the Tennessee Senate before her election to Congress in 2002?

Minority whip was her rank after four years in the chamber, where in 1998 she had become the first woman elected from her suburban Nashville district.

Which book setting out her political philosophy did Marsha Blackburn publish with Worthy Books in 2020?

The Mind of a Conservative Woman carries the subtitle Seeking the Best for Family and Country and reached shops two months before the 2020 presidential election.

Which Nashville suburb in Williamson County was Marsha Blackburn's home base when she first won election to Congress?

Brentwood lies just south of Nashville, inside a House district that was drawn to stretch about 200 miles from the Nashville suburbs to eastern Memphis.

Which Protestant denomination, with roots in the Scottish Reformation, counts Marsha Blackburn as a church member?

Presbyterian churches are governed by elected elders rather than bishops, and Blackburn also belongs to a prayer group that includes members of Congress.

Which Democratic senator joined Marsha Blackburn in 2022 to introduce the Kids Online Safety Act?

Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Blackburn wrote the bill to put a duty of care on platforms used by minors, and the pair reintroduced it in 2023 after it stalled.

Marsha Blackburn served on which House committee, whose jurisdiction runs from health care to telecommunications?

Energy and Commerce is one of the oldest standing committees in the House, dating from 1795, and Blackburn rose to be its vice chair.

A 2025 law celebrated by Marsha Blackburn fixes which Washington site for a monument to the women's suffrage movement?

The National Mall was fixed as the site by the act, and Blackburn stressed Tennessee's part as the last state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The BOTS Act, introduced in the House by Marsha Blackburn and Paul Tonko, outlawed software that bulk-buys what?

Event tickets were being swept up by automated programs and resold at a markup, so the 2016 law gave federal regulators the power to pursue the scalpers behind them.

Which Republican did Marsha Blackburn back in the 2008 presidential race after quitting a rival's campaign?

Fred Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who played a district attorney on Law & Order, entered the race late, and Blackburn switched her support to the home-state candidate.

A 2016 law co-sponsored by Marsha Blackburn was criticized for weakening which agency's power to halt opioid shipments?

DEA officials said the law, which passed Congress without objection, hampered efforts to freeze suspicious shipments from drug distributors; Blackburn said it had unintended consequences.

In 2017 Marsha Blackburn led the repeal of a broadband privacy rule adopted by which regulator?

Federal Communications Commission rules had required internet providers to get customers' permission before sharing browsing histories; her measure passed the House on a party-line vote.

Which Tennessee county, one of only two that Marsha Blackburn lost in 2024, also voted against her in 2018?

Shelby County, which contains Memphis, backed the Democrat both times, as did Nashville's Davidson County, while every other county went to Blackburn in 2024.

After the 2016 election, Marsha Blackburn was named a vice chair of which group working for Donald Trump?

Presidential transition team members vetted appointees and policy plans before the inauguration, and Blackburn was promoted to vice chair from its executive committee.

Marsha Blackburn founded a bipartisan caucus in the House of Representatives to champion which group of music creators?

Songwriters got their own congressional caucus through Blackburn, who went on to back the Music Modernization Act that overhauled how streaming royalties are licensed.

Which Democratic congressman defeated Marsha Blackburn in 1992, in her first run for a U.S. House seat?

Bart Gordon went on to chair the House science committee, while redistricting had moved Blackburn's home into a neighboring district by the time she ran again a decade later.

Which tech chief executive did Marsha Blackburn ask in a 2020 hearing about an employee who had criticized her?

Sundar Pichai of Google faced the question at a Senate hearing on online speech, two years after a Blackburn op-ed on tech oversight angered many of the company's staff.