Perhaps you are familiar with the idiom, “it’ll be a frosty Friday in July before…” (insert the impossible). While the rest of us were suffering in sweltering heat and humidity this month, there was a cold snap in Marsha Blackburn’s campaign for Governor of Tennessee. In fact, it was arguably her worst month since she announced her candidacy. Whether the “weather” means Congressman John Rose can overcome her early massive lead is doubtful. But politics, like the weather, can be hard to predict.
Marsha’s troubles started on June 30th. Blackburn spoke to the Greater Nashville Technology Council, and organizers invited the media and indicated Blackburn, who was not sitting for interviews with local media, would take questions. At the end of the remarks, Blackburn and her team made a beeline for the exit. The media chased, and much to the Senator’s chagrin, she had to wait on the elevator.
As I wrote last week, WTVF veteran reporter Ben Hall asked Blackburn repeatedly about why she wouldn’t take questions from the media and why she wouldn’t debate her opponents. Blackburn’s uncomfortable response was, “We’re talking to Tennesseans every single day. Every single day,” over and over, and over again. Watching the video compelled me to root for the elevator to open almost as much as Blackburn’s team prayed it would open.
This exchange prompted even louder criticism of Blackburn’s refusal to debate and forced her to eventually grant a handful of sit-down interviews across the state. Truthfully, if I were advising Blackburn, I wouldn’t advise her to debate, either. As the clear frontrunner from the start, debating does not improve her chances of winning. It only creates an opportunity for her to make a mistake that can be exploited. However, when a campaign decides not to debate, mistakes like the one at Greater Nashville Technology Council can’t happen.
On July 15th, Phil Williams, investigative reporter for WTVF, broke the story that Blackburn had faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation regarding the use of U.S. Senate staffers for campaign purposes. The investigation looked into whether staff had been pressured by Blackburn's chief strategist, Ward Baker, to participate in political events. Blackburn responded that the issue had been resolved, and that "No one takes compliance with Senate ethics rules more seriously than Senator Blackburn, and the Senate Ethics Committee completed its review and resolved this matter with our office’s full cooperation.” A curious statement considering Blackburn was once named to the list of most corrupt members of Congress by the organization CREW.
Five days later, Williams dropped a story about the secret staff recordings that led to the ethics investigation – and he released the recordings. Blackburn, of course, claimed that the complaint was politically motivated, but the recording indicated that Senate staffers expected to be pressured to violate the law that prohibits staffers from doing political work on taxpayers’ time. Both WTVF and her opponent, Congressman John Rose, called for Blackburn to release any correspondence with the Senate Ethics Committee.
Finally, two days ago, Blackburn’s attorneys called for the American Exceptionalism Institute to take down their ad that calls Blackburn “queen pharma mama.” While no one believes Marsha likes the nickname, her attorney’s complaint is that the ad implies a quid pro quo between Marsha and the pharmaceutical industry.
The ad, which is AI-generated, references a controversy from 2016 in which Blackburn and Congressman Tom Marino (R-PA) co-sponsored legislation that weakened the DEA’s ability to thwart the proliferation of opioids. At the same time, Blackburn received $120,000 in campaign contributions from Big Pharma. A DEA whistleblower prompted a joint investigation by the Washington Post and 60 Minutes that aired in 2017. Phil Bredesen’s campaign employed the attack in the 2018 U.S. Senate race, but it may have more “legs” now, considering the attention Blackburn’s attorneys have drawn to it.
Frontrunners are always the target of attacks from those running behind, so it’s no surprise that Blackburn is receiving criticism. What is surprising is how much of the controversy is of her own making. Clearly, her counterattacks, mostly from her Club for Growth-funded PAC, are an indication that she’s not measuring the drapes in the Governor’s mansion just yet.