Marsha Blackburn facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Marsha Blackburn
Official portrait, 2019
United States Senator from Tennessee
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2019 Serving with Bill Hagerty
Preceded by	Bob Corker
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's 7th district
In office January 3, 2003 – January 3, 2019
Preceded by	Ed Bryant
Succeeded by	Mark Green
Member of the Tennessee Senate from the 23rd district
In office January 12, 1999 – January 3, 2003
Preceded by	Keith Jordan
Succeeded by	Jim Bryson
Executive Director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment, and Music Commission
In office February 1995 – June 1997
Governor	Don Sundquist
Preceded by	Dancy Jones
Succeeded by	Anne Pope
Personal details
Born	Mary Marsha Wedgeworth (1952-06-06) June 6, 1952 (age 71) Laurel, Mississippi, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Chuck Blackburn ​ (m. 1975)​
Children	2
Residences	Brentwood, Tennessee, U.S.
Education	Mississippi State University (BS)

Mary Marsha Blackburn (née Wedgeworth; born June 6, 1952) is an American politician and businesswoman serving as the senior United States senator from Tennessee. Blackburn was first elected to the Senate in 2018. A member of the Republican Party, Blackburn was a state senator from 1999 to 2003 and represented TN's 7th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2003 to 2019, during which time the National Journal rated her among the House's most conservative members.

On November 6, 2018, Blackburn became the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee, defeating Democratic former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. Blackburn became the state's senior senator in January 2021 upon the retirement of Senator Lamar Alexander. A supporter of the Tea Party movement, Blackburn is a staunch backer of former president Donald Trump.

Early life and education

Marsha Wedgeworth as a junior at Northeast Jones High School in 1969, voted the fourth alternate most beautiful

Marsha Wedgeworth was born in Laurel, Mississippi, to Mary Jo (Morgan) and Hilman Wedgeworth, who worked in sales and management. She placed fourth during a beauty pageant in high school.

Blackburn attended Mississippi State University on a 4-H scholarship, earning a Bachelor of Science in home economics in 1974. Blackburn was a member of the Chi Omega sorority, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Little Sisters of Minerva (an auxiliary to a male fraternity) and was elected both as secretary and president of the Associated Women Students at Mississippi State University, wherein she worked to advance social issues through the AWS Zero Population Growth program.

Early career and political activity

In 1973, before graduating, Blackburn worked as a sales manager for the Times Mirror Company. From 1975 to 1978, she worked in the Castner Knott Division of Mercantile Stores, Inc. In 1978, she became the owner of Marketing Strategies, a promotion-event management firm. She continues to run this business.

Blackburn was a founding member of the Williamson County Young Republicans. She was chair of the Williamson County Republican Party from 1989 to 1991. In 1992, she ran for Congress in Tennessee's 6th congressional district, losing to incumbent Bart Gordon, and was a delegate to the 1992 Republican National Convention. In 1995, Blackburn was appointed executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment, and Music Commission by Tennessee governor Don Sundquist, holding that post through 1997.

Blackburn was a member of the Tennessee Senate from 1998 to 2003, and rose to be minority whip. In 2000, she took part in the effort to prevent the passage of a state income tax bill.

U.S. House of Representatives

Blackburn and Donald Rumsfeld at Fort Campbell in 2004

Blackburn with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 2007

Redistricting after the 2000 Census moved Blackburn's home from the 6th district into the 7th district, and created a gerrymandered district that stretched "in reptilian fashion" for 200 miles from eastern Memphis to southwest Nashville. In 2002, Blackburn ran in the Republican primary for this congressional seat. Of the four main candidates, she was the only one from the Nashville suburbs. The other three (Mark Norris, David Kustoff, and Brent Taylor) were all from Memphis or its suburbs. Blackburn was endorsed by the conservative Club for Growth. The three Memphians split the vote in that area, and she won the primary by nearly 20 percentage points.

In the general election, Blackburn defeated Democratic nominee Tim Barron with 70% of the vote. She was the fourth woman elected to Congress from Tennessee, and the first woman elected to Congress from Tennessee who did not succeed her husband. She was reelected seven times.

Tenure

Blackburn served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2019. During her House tenure, the National Journal rated her among the House's most conservative members.

In November 2007, Blackburn unsuccessfully ran for Republican conference chair. She was a senior advisor on Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign, before resigning her position in the Romney campaign and endorsing Fred Thompson for president. Blackburn was an assistant whip in Congress from 2003 to 2005, as well as deputy whip from 2005.

Blackburn with Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, and Cynthia Lummis at a press conference in 2010

Committee assignments

• Committee on the Budget
• Committee on Education and the Workforce
• Committee on Energy and Commerce
  • Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, vice-chair
  • Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet, chair
  • Subcommittee on Health Care
  • Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, vice-chair – Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade
• Committee on Judiciary
• Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Rep. Blackburn's official portraits, c. 2011 and c. 2016

U.S. Senate

2018 election

Final results by county in 2018:

     Marsha Blackburn

     70–80%
     60–70%
     50–60%
     40–50%

     Phil Bredesen

     70–80%
     60–70%
     50–60%

Blackburn with William Barr in 2019

In October 2017, Blackburn announced her candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by Bob Corker. In her announcement, she said that House Republicans were frustrated with Senate Republicans, who they believed acted like Democrats on important issues, including Obamacare. In the announcement, Blackburn called herself a "hardcore, card-carrying Tennessee conservative", said she was "politically incorrect", and noted with pride that liberals had called her a "wingnut". She dismissed compromise and bipartisanship, saying "No compromise, no apologies." She also said that she carried a gun in her purse. On August 2, Blackburn received 610,302 votes (84.48%) in the Republican primary, winning the nomination.

Blackburn during the 116th Congress

Blackburn largely backed President Donald Trump's policies, including a U.S.–Mexico border wall, and shared his opinion of National Football League national anthem protests. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence endorsed her. During the campaign, Blackburn pledged to support Trump's agenda and suggested that Bredesen would not.

Blackburn's congressional campaign logo, used during the 2018 election

For most of the campaign, polls showed the two candidates nearly tied. But after Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Blackburn pulled ahead. Some believe the hearings mobilized Republican voters in the state, even though Democrats won the House. Blackburn won the election with 54.7% of the vote to Bredesen's 43.9%, an unexpectedly large margin. She carried all but three counties in the state (Davidson, Shelby, and Haywood), the most counties ever won in an open Senate election in Tennessee.

Senate tenure

Blackburn at Turning Point USA 2019

Blackburn was sworn in as a U.S. senator on January 3, 2019. She is the first woman in history to represent Tennessee in the U.S. Senate. Upon the retirement of Senator Lamar Alexander in 2021, Blackburn became the senior U.S. senator from Tennessee.

Committee assignments

• Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
  • Subcommittee on Communications, Media and Broadband
  • Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Protection (Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, Climate Change and Manufacturing
  • Subcommittee on Tourism, Trade, and Export Promotion
• Committee on Finance
  • Subcommittee on Health Care
  • Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy
  • Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
  • Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law (Ranking)
  • Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety
  • Subcommittee on Intellectual Property
  • Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law
• Committee on Veterans' Affairs

Political positions

Blackburn is a Tea Party Republican. She has been called staunchly conservative, and has sometimes attended functions of, and met with leaders of, far-right groups. She has called herself "a hard-core, card-carrying Tennessee conservative." She scored 100% on American Conservative Union's 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2009 ratings of Congress, and was estimated by GovTrack to be the most ideologically conservative member of the Senate for the 2019 legislative year.

Birth certificate bill

In 2009, Blackburn sponsored legislation requiring presidential candidates to show their birth certificates. The bill was in response to conspiracy theories, commonly known as "birther" theories, that alleged that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Her spokesperson said that Blackburn did not doubt that Obama was an American citizen.

Education

In 2017, Blackburn said she was in discussions with Ivanka Trump on ways to make child care more affordable. In 2021, when President Biden proposed universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds and subsidized child care for low- and middle-income families, Blackburn likened the proposal to the communist policies of the Soviet Union. She also falsely claimed that the Biden administration proposed to put children in pre-K even if their families did not want to.

Health care and pharmaceuticals

Blackburn opposed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). She supported efforts to repeal the legislation. In 2017, while arguing for its repeal, Blackburn falsely stated that two of its popular provisions (protections for people with preexisting conditions and allowing adult children to be on their parents' health plans until they're 26) "were two Republican provisions which made it into the [Obamacare] bill." In her declaration that she would run for the Senate in 2018, she said that the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act was "a disgrace".

At October 2013 congressional hearings on the Affordable Care Act, Blackburn said the healthcare.gov website violated HIPAA and health information privacy rights.

Climate change

Blackburn rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In a 2014 debate with science communicator Bill Nye, Blackburn rejected the science and urgency of the issue, claiming that there is "no consensus" in the scientific community and that climate change remains "unproven".

Technology and telecommunications

Blackburn opposes net neutrality in the United States, calling it "socialistic". She opposes municipal broadband initiatives that aim to compete with Internet service providers. She supported bills that restrict municipalities from creating their own broadband networks, and wrote a bill to prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from preempting state laws that blocked municipal broadband.

In 2017, Blackburn introduced to the House a measure to dismantle an Obama-administration online privacy rule that the FCC adopted in October 2016. Her measure, which was supported by broadband providers but criticized by privacy advocates, repealed the rule that required broadband providers to obtain consumers' permission before sharing their online data, including browsing histories. The measure passed the House in a party-line vote in March 2017, after a similar measure had been passed the Senate the same week. She subsequently proposed legislation that expanded the requirement to include internet companies as well as broadband providers.

As of 2017, Blackburn had accepted at least $693,000 in campaign contributions from telecom companies.

Blackburn has advocated for increased regulation of technology companies and has criticized alleged anti-conservative bias on major platforms. In June 2018, she published an op-ed arguing for greater oversight and restrictions on technology companies that sparked a vocal backlash among employees at Google. During a 2020 Commerce Committee hearing in which she claimed that tech companies stifle free speech, Blackburn asked Google chief Sundar Pichai about the employment status of an employee who had criticized her.

LGBT rights

Blackburn opposes same-sex marriage and in 2004 and 2006 voted for proposed constitutional amendments to ban it. In 2010, she voted against repealing the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

Blackburn voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to ban discrimination against LGBT employees. In August 2019, she co-signed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit employment discrimination based upon gender identity. Blackburn has a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

Donald Trump

In November 2016, Blackburn joined Trump's presidential transition team as vice chair. She was a staunch supporter of his, and backed most of his policies and proposals. She nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations with North Korea. Vox speculated that Blackburn's ties to Trump, who won Tennessee in the 2016 election by 26 points, helped boost her Senate candidacy.

Blackburn and President Donald Trump waving at Nashville Rally in 2018

During Trump's first Senate impeachment trial, Blackburn left the chamber for a television interview. She also garnered attention by reading a book during the proceedings. Blackburn spent time during the trial to tweet about Lt. Col. Vindman, calling him unpatriotic for allegedly "badmouth[ing] and ridicul[ing]" the United States in front of Russia. In November 2019, #MoscowMarcia started trending on Twitter after Blackburn tweeted allegations against Vindman on her Twitter account. The Week characterized her tweet as a "conspiratorial smear". In her post, she wrote "Vindictive Vindman is the 'whistleblower's' handler". The tweet was in reference to Vindman, a decorated army official and Purple Heart veteran, who became a central figure in Trump's impeachment proceedings in Congress after testifying he heard Trump pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate the son of one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.

After Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Blackburn supported Trump's false claims of victory and raised funds to support the Trump campaign's effort to overturn the election results in court. In an interview on November 20, she briefly called Biden the "president-elect", but later retracted this as a mistake. On January 2, 2021, Blackburn and 10 other Republican senators announced that they would vote to oppose certification of the results of the election on January 6, the joint session of Congress in which the certification of a presidential election occurs, citing false allegations of widespread election fraud, irregularities, and unconstitutional changes to voting laws and voting restrictions. But after a mob of Trump supporters violently stormed Capitol Hill that day, she voted to certify the results of the election.

Immigration

Blackburn supported Trump's 2017 executive order imposing a temporary travel and immigration ban barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. She has often expressed support of Trump's immigration policy, especially his plan to greatly expand the Mexico–United States barrier. In March 2021, Blackburn visited the southern border of the United States with several other Republican senators; she accused President Biden of encouraging a surge of illegal immigration.

Women's rights

In 2009, Blackburn voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

China

In August 2022, Blackburn led a congressional delegation to Taiwan, where she met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Her visit was the third such delegation to visit Taiwan following Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit early that month. During her visit, Blackburn voiced support for Taiwan, calling it an "independent nation" and a "country", and also supported further U.S.-Taiwan relations and combating the "New Axis of Evil", which she defines as Iran, Russia, and North Korea, led by China. China claims Taiwan as part of its own territory and condemns most visits by U.S. lawmakers.

January 6 United States Capitol attack

In 2021, Blackburn abstained from voting on the creation of the January 6 commission.

Personal life

Blackburn is married to Chuck Blackburn. They live in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville in Williamson County, and have two children. She is a Presbyterian and a member of Christ Presbyterian Church.

Blackburn is a member of The C Street Family, a prayer group that includes members of Congress. She is a former member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board.

Blackburn is the author of The Mind of a Conservative Woman: Seeking the Best for Family and Country. The book was published on September 1, 2020, by Worthy Books.

Electoral history

See also

In Spanish: Marsha Blackburn para niños

• Women in the United States House of Representatives
• Women in the United States Senate