Marsha Blackburn, leading anti-voting voice in Senate, wins Tennessee GOP governor primary

By Jacob Knutson

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in the U.S. Capitol in July 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in the U.S. Capitol in July 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Marsha Blackburn, one of the most fervently anti-voting voices in the Senate, won Tennessee’s Republican gubernatorial primary Thursday, likely sending her to the governor’s mansion in the deep-red state this November.

Since first being elected to the Senate in 2018, Blackburn has routinely supported legislation restricting access to the ballot — including President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act, which would undermine millions of Americans’ right to vote if it became law.

In addition to supporting the SAVE America Act, she introduced legislation earlier this year that would require states to feed their voter registration lists through a Department of Homeland Security database that Trump officials have retrofitted into a deeply flawed tool to maintain voter rolls.

Called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, the database has been shown to erroneously flag eligible voters as potential noncitizens, putting their right to vote at risk.

As part of her campaign as governor, Blackburn aggressively supported the political gerrymander passed by the Tennessee GOP after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Republicans’ new congressional map eliminated the state’s only Black-majority district and its lone Democratic seat. 

After initially saying she wouldn’t vote to certify former President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election over false claims of voter fraud, Blackburn flipped her vote in the aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6 riot.

Blackburn defeated Rep. John Rose, who has represented Tennessee’s 6th congressional district since 2019. Notably, Trump refused to make an endorsement in the race, claiming he liked both candidates and had “begged” Blackburn to remain in the Senate.

Rose has his own record of election denial: In 2020, he voted against certifying the vote. During the primary, he tried to use Blackburn’s ultimate decision to certify against her, claiming she “didn’t keep her word.”