Marsha Blackburn
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40 free Marsha Blackburn trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Marsha Blackburn has been a fixture of Tennessee politics for a generation: a state legislator, an eight-term member of the House and the first woman her state elected to the United States Senate. Few lawmakers have collected as many headline moments along the way, from viral hearing exchanges to run-ins with celebrities. This quiz covers the whole story: her early life and first jobs, the races she won and lost, the bills that carry her name, her committee work on technology and health policy, and the clashes that made national news. It is written for politics followers, civics students and anyone curious about one of the best-known figures in the modern Republican Party. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will learn something even when you guess wrong.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pop star broke a long political silence in 2018 to oppose Marsha Blackburn's run for the Senate?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift told her Instagram followers she would vote for the Democrat instead, a decision later shown in her documentary Miss Americana.
Q 02Asked by Marsha Blackburn to define the word woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson replied she was not a what?
Biologist
Biologist was the job Jackson said she lacked when declining to answer at her 2022 hearings; Blackburn went on to vote against her confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Q 03Which TV science presenter debated Marsha Blackburn about climate change on a Sunday political talk show in 2014?
Bill Nye
Bill Nye, the Science Guy of children's television, met her on NBC's Meet the Press, where the host corrected Blackburn's claim that scientists had reached no consensus.
Q 04Which 2023 film did Marsha Blackburn criticize over a cartoon map said to show China's disputed sea claims?
Barbie
Barbie shows a doodled world map that critics said traced the nine-dash line, China's contested claim to the South China Sea; the studio called it a child-like crayon drawing.
Q 05In 2026, Marsha Blackburn became the first woman to win Tennessee's Republican nomination for which office?
Governor
Governor was the prize: her August 2026 primary win made her the first woman nominated for the office by Tennessee Republicans, a year to the day after she entered the race.
Q 06In which neighboring state was Marsha Blackburn, the first woman Tennessee sent to the U.S. Senate, born?
Mississippi
Mississippi was her starting point: she was born in the town of Laurel in 1952 and stayed in the state for university before settling near Nashville.
Q 07For which international award did Marsha Blackburn nominate Donald Trump after his negotiations with North Korea?
Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize nominations can come from any member of a national legislature, which is how a House member was able to put a sitting president forward.
Q 08Which island did Marsha Blackburn visit in August 2022, meeting President Tsai Ing-wen weeks after Nancy Pelosi's trip?
Taiwan
Taiwan was more than a courtesy stop: Blackburn pointedly called the island a country and an independent nation, a description Beijing rejects.
Q 09What job did Marsha Blackburn do for the Southwestern Company while studying for her university degree?
Selling books door-to-door
Selling books door-to-door made her one of the company's first female representatives in the South, and she helped it organize an all-female sales division.
Q 10Marsha Blackburn chaired a House select panel formed after undercover videos targeted which health care organization?
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood was accused in the videos of selling fetal tissue; later investigations found no evidence of such sales, and Washington Post and Los Angeles Times editorials called the panel's inquiry a witch hunt.
Q 11Which Democrat, a former mayor of Nashville, did Marsha Blackburn defeat to win her Senate seat in 2018?
Phil Bredesen
Phil Bredesen had already won two statewide elections and polled level with her for months, yet Blackburn finished nearly eleven points ahead.
Q 12Which former Chattanooga mayor's retirement opened the Senate seat that Marsha Blackburn won in 2018?
Bob Corker
Bob Corker, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in September 2017 that he would not seek a third term, and Blackburn entered the race the following month.
Q 13Which former U.S. Education Secretary's retirement in 2021 made Marsha Blackburn the senior senator from Tennessee?
Lamar Alexander
Q 21Marsha Blackburn graduated from university in the 1970s with a Bachelor of Science degree in which subject?
Home economics
Home economics was her major, and she led the Associated Women Students as president before starting a career in retail marketing and event promotion.
Q 22A scholarship from which rural youth organization took Marsha Blackburn to university in the early 1970s?
4-H
4-H, the club network whose four-leaf clover stands for head, heart, hands and health, awarded her the scholarship she studied on.
Q 23From 1995 to 1997, Marsha Blackburn led a Tennessee state commission promoting which group of industries?
Film, entertainment and music
Lamar Alexander stepped down after three Senate terms, so Blackburn became her state's senior senator only two years after arriving in the chamber.
Q 14Which Tennessee legislator, who survived a 2023 expulsion vote by one vote, did Marsha Blackburn defeat in 2024?
Gloria Johnson
Gloria Johnson, a retired special education teacher from Knoxville, faced Blackburn in the first Tennessee Senate race in which both major parties nominated women.
Q 15Polls had Marsha Blackburn's 2018 Senate race tied until she pulled ahead after which Supreme Court nominee's hearings?
Brett Kavanaugh
Brett Kavanaugh's bitter confirmation fight was widely thought to have fired up Republican voters in Tennessee, and Blackburn went on to carry all but three counties.
Q 16Marsha Blackburn was floated as a running mate for Donald Trump in 2024 before he chose which fellow senator?
JD Vance
JD Vance, then a first-term senator from Ohio, got the nod at the party convention, and Blackburn won a second Senate term of her own that November.
Q 17Which grassroots conservative cause that rose in Barack Obama's first term counts Marsha Blackburn as a supporter?
Tea Party
Tea Party activists demanded lower spending and smaller government from 2009, themes Blackburn had campaigned on since she first entered Congress years earlier.
Q 18Which health insurance law did Marsha Blackburn spend years trying to repeal, calling the failure a disgrace?
Affordable Care Act
Affordable Care Act repeal collapsed in the Senate in 2017, and Blackburn pointed to that failure when she announced her own run for the upper chamber a few months later.
Q 19Which internet rule did Marsha Blackburn, chair of a House telecoms subcommittee, oppose and call socialistic?
Net neutrality
Net neutrality bars broadband providers from favoring some web traffic over the rest, and Blackburn also fought city-run broadband networks that compete with private carriers.
Q 20When announcing her 2018 Senate campaign, Marsha Blackburn said she carries what in her purse?
A gun
A gun in her purse was one boast among several in the announcement, where she also called herself politically incorrect and welcomed being labeled a wingnut by liberals.
Film, entertainment and music were the commission's brief, and the appointment was her first job in public service after years of running a marketing business.
Q 24In the Tennessee Senate in 2000, Marsha Blackburn won attention by leading the fight against which proposal?
A state income tax
A state income tax was defeated after a statewide grassroots campaign that she helped lead, and the fight gave her a lasting reputation as an anti-tax champion.
Q 25Which leadership post did Marsha Blackburn reach in the Tennessee Senate before her election to Congress in 2002?
Minority whip
Minority whip was her rank after four years in the chamber, where in 1998 she had become the first woman elected from her suburban Nashville district.
Q 26Which book setting out her political philosophy did Marsha Blackburn publish with Worthy Books in 2020?
The Mind of a Conservative Woman
The Mind of a Conservative Woman carries the subtitle Seeking the Best for Family and Country and reached shops two months before the 2020 presidential election.
Q 27Which Nashville suburb in Williamson County was Marsha Blackburn's home base when she first won election to Congress?
Brentwood
Brentwood lies just south of Nashville, inside a House district that was drawn to stretch about 200 miles from the Nashville suburbs to eastern Memphis.
Q 28Which Protestant denomination, with roots in the Scottish Reformation, counts Marsha Blackburn as a church member?
Presbyterian
Presbyterian churches are governed by elected elders rather than bishops, and Blackburn also belongs to a prayer group that includes members of Congress.
Q 29Which Democratic senator joined Marsha Blackburn in 2022 to introduce the Kids Online Safety Act?
Richard Blumenthal
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Blackburn wrote the bill to put a duty of care on platforms used by minors, and the pair reintroduced it in 2023 after it stalled.
Q 30Marsha Blackburn served on which House committee, whose jurisdiction runs from health care to telecommunications?
Energy and Commerce
Energy and Commerce is one of the oldest standing committees in the House, dating from 1795, and Blackburn rose to be its vice chair.