Blackburn is the senior senator from Tennessee and is a Republican. She has served since Jan 3, 2019. Blackburn is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. She is 70 years old.
She was previously the representative for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district as a Republican from 2003 to 2018.
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Blackburn was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. In the days leading up to January 6, 2021’s congressional certification of the election, Blackburn announced her intent to object to the inclusion of some states from the certification, which would have disenfranchised millions of voters and amplified lies, conspiracy theories, and preposterous legal theories about purported fraud. (She ultimately did not vote to exclude any states from the Electoral College, however.) The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
![Photo of Sen. Marsha Blackburn [R-TN]](/static/legislator-photos/400032-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for Blackburn.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Blackburn is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Blackburn has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 27, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Marsha Blackburn sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Blackburn was the primary sponsor of 15 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- S. 4017 (117th): A bill to designate the United States courthouse located at 111 South Highland Avenue in Jackson, Tennessee, as the “James D. Todd United States Courthouse”, and for …
- S. 2731 (117th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2245 Rosa L Parks Boulevard in Nashville, Tennessee, as the “Thelma Harper Post …
- S. 2589 (117th): Securing America’s Medicine Cabinet Act of 2021
- S. 3820 (116th): Open Technology Fund Authorization Act
- S. 1235 (116th): Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act
- H.R. 5799 (115th): Medicaid Drug Review, Utilization, Good Governance Improvement Act
- H.R. 4986 (115th): RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018
Does 15 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Blackburn sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Health (28%) International Affairs (19%) Armed Forces and National Security (13%) Crime and Law Enforcement (9%) Immigration (9%) Commerce (8%) Government Operations and Politics (7%) Education (6%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Blackburn recently introduced the following legislation:
- S. 953: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to establish a rural …
- S. 940: A bill to establish a demonstration program to provide payments on eligible loans …
- S. 770: Taiwan Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2023
- S. 624: Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act
- S. 474: REPORT Act
- S. 519: A bill to prohibit individuals charged with or convicted of human trafficking or …
- S. 327: A bill to make 5 percent across-the-board rescissions in non-defense, non-homeland-security, and non-veterans-affairs …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2019 to Mar 2023, Blackburn missed 68 of 1,733 roll call votes, which is 3.9%. This is worse than the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
