Mary Marsha Blackburn (née Wedgeworth; born June 6, 1952) is an American politician and businesswoman currently serving as the senior United States senator from Tennessee. First elected to the Senate in 2018, Blackburn has become a notable figure in Tennessee politics.
Early Life and Education
Before entering politics, Blackburn gained experience in the business world. In 1973, prior to graduating from college, she worked as a sales manager for the Times Mirror Company. By 1978, she had transitioned to entrepreneurship, becoming the owner of Marketing Strategies, a promotion-event management firm.
Political Career
Blackburn was first elected to the Senate in 2018. A supporter of the Tea Party movement, Blackburn is a staunch ally of President Donald Trump. She opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and the Affordable Care Act. Senator 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. Upon the retirement of Congressman Jim Cooper in 2023, she became the dean of Tennessee's congressional delegation.
Final results by county in 2018: Marsha Blackburn
2018 Senate Election
In October 2017, Blackburn announced her candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by Bob Corker. 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.
Read also: The Life of Chad Everett Harris
Blackburn was reelected with 63.8% of the vote to Johnson's 34.2%. senator on January 3, 2019.
Key Policy Positions and Actions
Blackburn staunchly opposes abortion and sought to overturn Roe v. Wade. In 2015, Blackburn led a panel that investigated the Planned Parenthood undercover video controversy, in which anti-abortion activists published a video purporting to show that Planned Parenthood illicitly sold fetal tissue.
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.
In December 2020, Blackburn posted, "China has a 5,000-year history of cheating and stealing. would "not bow down to sexist communist thugs". In August 2022, Blackburn led a congressional delegation to Taiwan, where she met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Her delegation was the third such delegation to visit Taiwan following Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit early that month. In July 2023, Blackburn criticized the movie Barbie for "bending to Beijing to make a quick buck" after it was alleged the film contained a map of the world displaying the nine-dash line, a territorial claim by China to the South China Sea that the international community rejects. In a statement addressing like criticisms, Warner Bros., Barbie's production company, said the map was a "child-like crayon drawing . . .
Blackburn rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In March 2022, Blackburn called Griswold v. 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.
Read also: "Married to Evil": Chad Graves
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.
After the 2018 Thousand Oaks shooting on November 7, 2018, which resulted in 12 deaths, Blackburn responded to a question about the shooting in a Fox News interview by saying, "how do we make certain that we protect the Second Amendment and protect our citizens? We've always done that in this country.
According to The New York Times in 2017, Blackburn's best-known legislation was her co-sponsorship of a bill that revised the legal standard the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had used to establish that "a significant and present risk of death or serious bodily harm that is more likely than not to occur", rather than the previous tougher standard of "imminent danger", before suspending the manufacturer's opioid drug shipments. The legislation passed the House and the Senate unanimously, but was criticized in internal Justice Department documents and by the DEA's chief administrative law judge as hampering DEA enforcement actions against drug distribution companies engaging in black-market sales.
Joe Rannazzisi, who had led the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, said he informed Blackburn's staffers what the effects of a 2016 law she co-sponsored would be. Blackburn said her bill had "unintended consequences", but Rannazzisi said they should have been anticipated. He said that during a July 2014 conference call he told congressional staffers the bill would cause more difficulties for the DEA if it pursued corporations that were illegally distributing such drugs.
Blackburn and Representative Tom Marino, the main co-sponsor of her House bill, sent a letter requesting an Office of Inspector General investigation about Rannazzisi, saying he tried to intimidate Congress in the July conversation.
Read also: Vallow-Daybell Trial: Key Evidence
Social Issues
Blackburn opposes same-sex marriage and in 2004 and 2006 voted for proposed constitutional amendments to ban it. On October 26, 2020, Blackburn voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States.
On March 22, 2022, during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Blackburn asked Jackson to define the word "woman". "'I can’t-' Jackson replied. 'You can’t?' Blackburn said. 'Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,' Jackson said.
In the 117th United States Congress, Blackburn introduced the bipartisan Open App Markets Act alongside Senators Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar. Blackburn is the author of The Mind of a Conservative Woman: Seeking the Best for Family and Country.
Popular articles:
tags: #Chad
