Early life and education

Born Marsha Wedgeworth in Laurel, Mississippi, she attended Mississippi State University, earning a B.S. in home economics in 1973. In college, she joined Chi Omega and worked as a student manager for the Southwestern Company, selling books door-to-door.

Career

Blackburn's professional career began in 1973 when she was hired as a sales manager for Times Mirror, Inc. In 1975 she was named Director of Retail Fashion and Special Events of the Castner Knott Division of Mercantile Stores, Inc. She held this position until 1978, when she became the owner of Marketing Strategies, a promotion-event management and image consulting firm. She continues to run this business.

Blackburn was a founding member of the Williamson County Young Republicans. She became chair of the Williamson County Republican Party in 1989. In 1992, she was a candidate for Congress and a delegate to the 1992 Republican National Convention. She lost the congressional race, but remained active in politics. In 1995, Blackburn was appointed executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment, and Music Commission by Tennessee governor Don Sundquist, and held that post through 1997. In 1998, she was elected to the Tennessee Senate, where she served for six years and rose to be minority whip.

In 2000, she took part in the effort to prevent the passage of a state income tax championed by Sundquist and to ask for accountability for spending increases related to TennCare.

In early 2016, there were rumors in political spheres that Mrs. Blackburn was being vetted to be a running mate for Donald Trump. She addressed these rumors at CPAC 2016, stating that she would seriously consider the offer if asked.

U.S. House of Representatives

Blackburn is one of three female U.S. representatives in congress who identifies as a "congressman"; the others are Republicans Diane Black of Tennessee and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.

In 2002, Republican Ed Bryant gave up his seat as representative from Tennessee's 7th District so that he could run for the Senate. Blackburn ran against Democrat Tim Barron for the seat and was overwhelmingly elected, thus becoming the first woman in Tennessee history to be elected to congress without following her husband. In 2004, she ran unopposed and was re-elected.

In 2006, she successfully ran for a third term in the House of Representatives. In November 2007, she ran for the position of Republican conference chair, but lost. She joined Mitt Romney's presidential campaign as a senior advisor. In May 2007, she resigned her position in the Romney campaign and endorsed former U.S. senator Fred Thompson for president. She was re-elected in 2008, 2010 and 2012; garnering no Democratic Party challenger in 2012.

Blackburn has been a member of the following committees:

• Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, vice chair
• Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet
• Subcommittee on Health Care
• Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, vice chair - Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade
• Republican Study Committee, former communications chair
• National Republican Congressional Committee, communications chair

She was also a member of the following caucuses:

• Congressional Songwriters Caucus, co-founder, co-chair
• Reliable Energy Caucus
• International Conservation Caucus.

She served as an assistant whip in the 108th and 109th Congress, and served as a deputy whip for the 110th and 111th Congress. During the 110th Congress she was the communications chair for the Republican Study Committee. She served as a member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee for a third consecutive term. In 2008, she won her primary race by gaining 62 percent of the vote against Shelby County registrar of deeds, and former fellow state senator Tom Leatherwood.

Though serving a national role as vice chair of the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Blackburn does not currently accept emails from outside of Tennessee's 7th congressional district.

In October 2015, Blackburn was selected to lead the Select Investigative Panel on Planned Parenthood.

Political campaigns

Redistricting after the 2000 Census moved Blackburn's home from the 6th district into the 7th district. The 6th District's Democratic incumbent congressman, Bart Gordon, had faced three tough races in the 1990s, including a near-defeat in 1994, in part due to the growing Republican trend in Nashville's suburbs. This was especially pronounced in Williamson County, the richest county in the state and the most Republican county in Middle Tennessee. It appeared that the Democratic-controlled Tennessee General Assembly wanted to protect Gordon by moving Williamson County into the already heavily Republican 7th District. To maintain approximately equal district sizes (as required by Wesberry v. Sanders (1964)) and to compensate for the substantial increase in the 7th's population by the addition of Williamson County, the legislature shifted some of the more Democratic parts of Clarksville to the nearby 8th district. This created a district that, in the words of Memphis Magazine, stretched "in reptilian fashion" for 200 miles from eastern Memphis to the Nashville suburbs.

In 2002, 7th District incumbent Republican congressman Ed Bryant decided to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Fred Thompson. Blackburn entered the primary to replace Bryant. The 7th was heavily Republican and it was generally understood that the race would effectively be decided in the Republican primary. Of the four serious candidates, she was the only one from the Nashville suburbs, while the other three, future state senate majority leader Mark Norris, conservative activist and future U. S. Attorney David Kustoff, and city councilman Brent Taylor, were all from Memphis and its suburbs. She also had the support of the conservative Club for Growth. The three Memphians split the vote in that area, allowing her to win the primary by nearly 20 percentage points. In the general election, she easily defeated Democratic nominee Tim Barron, winning more than 70% of the vote. She was the fourth woman elected to Congress from Tennessee, but the first not to serve as a stand-in for her husband. (Irene Bailey Baker and Louise Reece had served as caretakers after their husbands died in office, and Marilyn Lloyd replaced her husband on the ballot when he died after the primary election.)

She ran unopposed for reelection in 2004, which is somewhat unusual for a freshman member of Congress, even from a district as heavily Republican as the 7th. A 2004 survey of congressional aides by the Washingtonian identified her as one of the three "best newcomers" in the House of Representatives.

Redistricting after the 2010 census made the 7th district more compact; it lost its shares of Nashville and Memphis while regaining all of Clarksville. However, it is no less Republican than its predecessor; with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+18, it is one of the most Republican districts in the South.

Political positions

Blackburn is a fiscal and social conservative. She opposed the Affordable Care Act, stating that with the passage of the bill, "freedom dies a little bit today." She subsequently supported efforts to repeal the legislation, arguing that it "means well" but fails to live up to its promise. When pressed by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on the claim that the legislation included "death panels" for the elderly, she would not reject this assertion, despite the fact that, according to the Christian Science Monitor, it had been "...widely debunked by fact-checking journalism organizations.

In April 2009, she questioned former Vice President Al Gore during an energy-related congressional hearing: "The legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?”. The Independent, a London-based periodical, has credited her for "famously put on the spot about his business interests in the industry" during this confrontation. Gore vociferously refuted the implied accusation, pointing out that every penny he makes from renewable technology investment goes to a non-profit.

In 2013, she was chosen to manage debate on a bill promoted by House Republicans which would criminalize all abortions after 22 weeks' gestation, with limited exceptions for rape or incest. She replaced the bill's sponsor, congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ), after Franks made controversial claims that the chances of pregnancy resulting from rape were "very low".

At October 2013 congressional hearings on the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare", Blackburn charged that the health.gov website violated HIPAA and health information privacy rights. The next day, when a CNN interviewer pointed out that the only health-related question that the web site asks is "do you smoke?", Blackburn repeated her criticism of the site for violating privacy rights.

She scored 100% on American Conservative Union’s 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009 Ratings of Congress. According to her campaign website, National Journal described her as a "freshman to watch" and a "top House conservative" in 2003 and 2004, Americans for Tax Reform called her a "taxpayer hero" in 2003, and the National Right to Life praised her for supporting the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act. In 2008, Blackburn was named one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, although the Federal Election Commission unanimously rejected CREW's complaint.

She is a staunch opponent of Net neutrality in the United States and municipal broadband initiatives. As of March 2015 her campaign has accepted at least $221,900 from contributors in the telecommunications industry. These include AT&T and Comcast who have strongly lobbied against net neutrality. She supported bills that restrict municipalities from creating their own broadband networks, and wrote a bill to prevent the FCC from interfering on behalf of communities.

Scientific positions

On February 16, 2014, Blackburn appeared on NBC's Meet The Press as a guest in a climate change segment alongside Bill Nye. She reiterated a belief that scientists do not sufficiently understand the climate to make long term predictions, and argued that a cost/benefit analysis did not support taking any action against further carbon emission increases.

In 2015, Blackburn shared her belief that the world has been cooling instead of warming. She stated, "I think we've cooled almost 1 degree (F)." Blackburn has also rejected the theory of evolution.

Controversy

In April 2008, Blackburn summoned reporters to explain that she had found errors in her Federal Election Commission filings going back several years and had failed to report $286,278 in expenditures, including $18,821 to a fundraising consulting company run by her son-in-law, Paul Ketchel. She also failed to report $102,044 in contributions.

Electoral history

Tennessee's 6th congressional district: 1992 results

Year		Democratic	Votes	Pct		Republican	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
1992		Bart Gordon	120,177	57%		Marsha Blackburn	86,289	41%		H. Scott Benson	Independent	5,952	3%	*

*Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1992, write-ins received 10 votes.

Tennessee's 7th congressional district: Results 2002-2012

Year		Democratic	Votes	Pct		Republican	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
2002		Tim Barron	51,790	26%		Marsha Blackburn	138,314	71%		Rick Patterson	Independent	5,423	3%	*
2004		(no candidate)				Marsha Blackburn	232,404	100%
2006		Bill Morrison	73,369	32%		Marsha Blackburn	152,288	66%		Kathleen A. Culver	Independent	1,806	1%	*
2008		Randy Morris	98,207	31%		Marsha Blackburn	214,214	69%
2010		Greg Rabidoux	54,341	25%		Marsha Blackburn	158,892	72%		J.W. Stone	Independent	6,319	3%	*
2012		Credo Amouzouvik	61,050	24%		Marsha Blackburn	180,775	71%		Howard Switzer	Green	4,584	2%	*
2014		Daniel Cramer	42,280	26.8%		Marsha Blackburn	110,534	69.9%		Leonard Ladner	Independent	5,093	3.2%

*Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 2002, write-ins received 31 votes. In 2006, James B. "Mickey" White received 898 votes; William J. Smith received 848 votes; John L. Rimer received 710 votes; and Gayl G. Pratt received 663 votes.

Personal life

Blackburn is married to Chuck Blackburn, and they live in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville in Williamson County. The couple have two children. Her husband is the founder of the International Bow Tie Society (IBTS). She is Presbyterian and her church, Christ Presbyterian Church, is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America. She 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.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]