Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn announced Thursday that she would run for the Senate seat that retiring senator Bob Corker is vacating in 2018.
In her announcement video, Blackburn takes aim at the Senate as “totally dysfunctional” and “enough to drive you nuts,” while portraying herself as “a hardcore, card-carrying Tennessee conservative” who is “politically correct and proud of it.”
“Too many Senate Republicans act like Democrats or worse,” she says, “and that’s what we have to change.”
The announcement came less than an hour after another potential candidate, Gov. Bill Haslam, said he would not enter the contest, saying a campaign would distract him from his elected job as governor.
Blackburn, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet, is the first to declare a challenge for Corker’s seat. She has worked in recent weeks to burnish her conservative credentials, introducing a resolution on Sept. 26 arguing that standing respectfully during the national anthem “is actually in federal statute.”
