The congresswoman from the 7th District is Marsha Blackburn, a Republican elected in 2002 and a conservative firebrand who has become a frequent GOP presence on television. Read More

The congresswoman from the 7th District is Marsha Blackburn, a Republican elected in 2002 and a conservative firebrand who has become a frequent GOP presence on television.

Blackburn grew up in Laurel, Miss., where her father sold oil-field production equipment. Her interest in gardening and canning won her a 4-H college scholarship at Mississippi State University, where she majored in merchandising and clothing. She helped pay her way through college by selling books door-to-door. She then became a sales manager with Southwestern Company, which sells educational materials, and moved to Williamson County. Her hilltop home is known as “Up Yonder,” named by its former owner, Grand Ole Opry star Minnie Pearl. Blackburn became director of retail fashion for a Nashville department store and was appointed by Republican Gov. Don Sundquist as executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission. In 1992, she was the Republican nominee against Democrat Bart Gordon in the 6th District, and lost 57%-41%. Blackburn was elected in 1998 to the Tennessee Senate, where she became an outspoken opponent of Sundquist’s proposed income tax.

When Republican Rep. Ed Bryant decided to run for the Senate, Blackburn ran for his seat. Seven candidates ran in the GOP primary, three of them familiar figures in the Memphis area. Blackburn was the only well-known candidate from the Nashville area. She benefited from financial support from the national anti-tax group Club for Growth, and from attacks by the Shelby County candidates on one another. She ran as anti-abortion rights, pro-gun and pro-military conservative and won with 40% of the vote, while the other candidates split the rest. She went on to easily win the general election.

In the House, Blackburn’s voting record is among the most conservative. She is active on the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of the House’s most right-leaning members, and in 2009 cosponsored the controversial “birther” bill requiring future presidential candidates to prove they were born in the United States, a measure that played off attacks on President Barack Obama’s legal fitness to hold office. In February 2011, she sponsored an amendment to cut spending for most non-defense programs by 5.5%, but 92 members of her party joined Democrats in arguing that it went too far and it failed. In April 2011, she voted against the compromise that Republicans struck with President Obama on the fiscal 2011 budget to avert a shutdown. A champion of gun owners’ rights, she has boasted about her perfect marksmanship score with her Smith & Wesson .38.

With her party controlling the House in 2011, Blackburn assumed a more prominent role on technology policy as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. A fervent advocate of the music industry central to her district, she has fought to protect intellectual property rights of artists against illegal music downloads. She also has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate the Internet, introducing a bill that would clarify that such a task is solely Congress’ responsibility. She was also active in the failed effort in early 2011 to repeal Obama’s health care legislation. On energy issues, she is a self-described skeptic of human-caused climate change and has called for more widespread use of nuclear power.

Blackburn was mentioned as a possible candidate for the Senate or governor in 2006 and again in 2010. But once she secured a seat on Energy and Commerce, she had sufficient incentive to remain in the House. After the 2006 election, she was one of four candidates for chairman of the Republican Conference, but she was eliminated on the second ballot. Instead, she became communications chair for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In 2008, she faced a primary challenge from Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, whose campaign gained ammunition when it was revealed Blackburn had misreported more than $440,000 on campaign finance disclosure forms dating to her first House campaign. Blackburn filed amended returns. The underdog Leatherwood, hoping to cement West Tennessee support, also charged that Blackburn had used her campaign funds to help her family’s businesses and that she hadn’t been effective in Washington. But Blackburn easily won the primary, 62%-38%, carrying every county except Shelby. She won easily in November.

In 2009, Blackburn wrote a book, Life Equity: Realize Your True Value and Pursue Your Passions at Any Stage in Life. She told the Nashville Tennessean that it was not intended to be political, but rather a “book of encouragement and empowerment for women.”