• Office Sought: Representative, Tennessee (7)
• Birth Date: June 6, 1952
• Occupation: Retail Marketing
• Religion: Presbyterian
• Web site: http://www.house.gov/blackburn

Education

Mississippi State University, BA

Marsha Blackburn was born in Laurel, Miss., and now lives in Brentwood. She graduated from Mississippi State University in 1973 and has been involved in politics since 1977, when she helped found a Young Republicans chapter in Tennessee's Williamson County. As a Tennessee state senator, Marsha Blackburn helped defeat efforts to implement a state income tax and she largely based her campaign for Congress on that effort.

She ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1992. She was executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission prior to her election in 1998 to the state Senate from the 23rd District.

With her election to the U.S. House in 2002, Blackburn became the first woman elected to Congress from Tennessee without having been chosen to replace a dead spouse.

Blackburn and her husband, Chuck, have two children.