U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn cruised to Senate reelection in 2024, spending over $10 million in the effort, but unlike in previous years, the money didn’t stop flowing after the votes were counted.
After the election, Blackburn’s campaign account remained one of the largest spenders in the U.S. Senate, doling out nearly $3.2 million from December 2024 to August 2025, when she announced her gubernatorial campaign, Federal Election Commission records show.
Instead of letting her campaign apparatus slow down because she wouldn’t be up for reelection to the Senate until 2030, her monthly spending on consultants, advertisements and private airfare showed a candidate who never planned to stop campaigning.
Gary Loe, a Knoxville Republican activist, called the spending “deceitful” and filed a complaint with the state campaign finance board alleging Blackburn was using her Senate campaign funds to supplement her campaign for governor before she formally announced her intention to run.
“Voters are bright enough to see what’s happening,” Loe said in an interview. Loe’s complaint is still under review by the state campaign finance board.
Tennessee’s past three governors have been businessmen, each leveraging multimillion-dollar fortunes alongside their political skills to reach the state’s top office. But in 2026, the frontrunner to replace term-limited Gov. Bill Lee is Blackburn — a nearly 30-year public official whose latest U.S. Senate financial disclosure puts her net worth between $650,000 and $1.7 million.
Her chief rival, Cookeville Republican U.S. Rep. John Rose, fits the more recent Tennessee governor mold, with his financial disclosure estimating a net worth of $23 million to $95 million. Rose has personally given his gubernatorial campaign $5 million; Blackburn has yet to contribute a dollar of her own.
Instead, she has used her years of political connections and standing as a close ally of President Donald Trump to raise large sums of cash, then deployed that money to support local Republicans, buy advertisements, make her travel between Tennessee and Washington D.C. easier and continue to pay consultants from her Senate account in 2025 before they jumped over to her gubernatorial campaign.
She was also able to get endorsements from potential primary challengers, like Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs and former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger. Blackburn is now polling over 50 percentage points ahead of Rose and state Rep. Monty Fritts of Kingston, another GOP gubernatorial primary rival.
Abigail Sigler, Blackburn’s campaign manager, said by email the structure of campaign spending was “lawful, routine and “unremarkable” because “federal law expressly allows a U.S. Senator to run for state office while maintaining an active federal committee.”
How Blackburn built and spent her campaign war chest
The turning point in Blackburn’s political career — going from a back-bench U.S. House member to a national political figure — came when she was one of the first congressional Republicans to endorse Trump in 2016. As Trump consolidated control of the party apparatus over the ensuing decade, Blackburn rose with him, becoming one of his most visible cable news surrogates.
Trump offered pre-primary endorsement of her 2018 Senate bid, and while he hasn’t endorsed her gubernatorial campaign, he has said Tennessee would be “lucky” to have her as governor. The closeness of their relationship is prominent in Blackburn’s gubernatorial campaign materials.
Blackburn became a prolific fundraiser in the Trump era, pulling in small donors from across the country through the GOP fundraising platform WinRed and tapping into a select group of wealthy individuals, enabling her to spend millions of dollars in each election.
In her 2018 Senate race against former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen, Blackburn spent almost all of the $15 million she raised, ending that campaign with $615,000 in her account. This stands in contrast to the $5.5 million she had left over after the 2024 campaign.
Then from 2019 to 2022, she spent roughly $900,000 each year from her campaign account, compared to the $3.2 million from December 2024 to August 2025.
Sigler said the spending comparisons were “misleading and intellectually unserious,” and compared Blackburn’s Senate expenses to those of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who spent $6 million in 2025 after winning reelection in 2024.
Among the 67 U.S. Senators who aren’t running for reelection in 2026, Cruz spent the fourth most, and Blackburn the 10th most.
The Blackburn for Senate campaign used leftover cash on advertising, travel and staff.
First, she ran a six-figure TV ad in December 2024 wishing Tennesseans a “Merry Christmas,” and spent $60,000 on digital ads with the Tennessee Star, a conservative news outlet, in 2025. She spent the same amount of money with the Tennessee Star in 2024 during her reelection campaign.
Then, she paid about $200,000 for charter plane travel in 2025, roughly the same amount she spent during her Senate campaign.
Finally, Blackburn’s highest cost in 2025 was keeping many staff operatives who would eventually migrate to her gubernatorial campaign. Republican strategist Ward Baker’s firm, the Baker Group, along with three colleagues, drew nearly $50,000 per month from her Senate campaign in 2025, roughly the same amount they received when working on her Senate reelection.
Donations to state allies, affiliated-PAC collecting large checks
Over the Trump years, Blackburn has built a powerful political fundraising apparatus. Any additional funds beyond the campaign contribution limits allowed to her Senate campaign went to her federal and, eventually, state political action committees, both called Marsha PAC.
Campaign accounts have strict contribution limits, while PACs have no contribution limits. Blackburn’s legal fundraising strategy ensured that any contributions exceeding the allowed amount wouldn’t be returned but instead make their way to a PAC that could be used to support local Republicans.
From 2019 to 2025, Marsha PAC donated more than $800,000 to county Republican party organizations and candidates for state legislature and local offices, such as mayor and alderman. Many of the Tennessee Republicans who received campaign donations endorsed her after she announced her gubernatorial bid.
In the governor’s race, she’s also begun replicating the same fundraising methods.
Between her state gubernatorial campaign account and an affiliated political action committee called Team Tennessee, which was established in 2025 to boost Blackburn, a total of $7.5 million has been raised. Approximately $1.5 million can be traced to out-of-state small-dollar donors using WinRed, while Team Tennessee raised $1.25 million from three companies and six individuals.
Payday lender Advance Financial has given the PAC $300,000, while private prison operator CoreCivic (and Hiniger, as CEO at the time) gave her a combined $100,000. Both companies are among Tennessee’s largest political donors because of their dependence on state government. Advance Financial benefits from a law allowing it to sidestep state interest rate caps and charge 279.5% annual interest on payday loans. CoreCivic holds a $250 million state contract for its four prisons and benefits from a state-approved loophole allowing it to operate more than one.
In 2018, the last competitive Republican gubernatorial primary, both companies spread their donations evenly across candidates, waiting to see who would survive before writing a larger check ahead of the general election.
Other six-figure contributors to the Team Tennessee PAC include Tamara Stephens ($279,000) and tobacco company Reynolds American ($100,000). The PAC has also received money from a group of Williamson high profile Republicans that include logistics entrepreneur Spencer Patton ($250,000), Dr. Ralph Korpman ($100,000), Copart founder Willis Johnson ($100,000) and Franklin Home Mortgage CEO Daniel Crockett ($100,000).
Blackburn’s campaign account and the Team Tennessee PAC have a combined $4.2 million in cash on hand to spend in the primary, while Rose has $4.7 million.
Rose has told other news outlets he wants to wait to start buying advertisements and spending down his reserves until May, when he thinks voters will start thinking about the race.
In 2018, the two frontrunners in the Republican primary held a significant polling advantage over Lee for much of the spring, until he closed the gap in the early summer and eventually won the race.
The primary for the governor’s race is on Aug. 6, and the general election is on Nov. 3.
This article was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.
