Who Will Replace Marsha Blackburn in the Senate?
No one has been chosen yet — and the choice belongs to Marsha Blackburn herself. Blackburn stays in the U.S. Senate until she is sworn in as Tennessee's governor on January 16. She then resigns her seat and appoints her own successor, who will serve until a special election in 2028 for the rest of a term that runs to January 2031. The favorite, according to multiple people familiar with the jockeying who spoke to The Washington Sun, is Glenn Jacobs — the former two-term mayor of Knox County, better known to wrestling fans as Kane. Behind him is Representative Tim Burchett, the only contender openly asking for the job.
The plain reality is in the sequence Blackburn arranged. She won the governor's race on November 3, beating Democrat Jerri Green 45.52 percent to 42.95 percent to become the first woman elected governor of Tennessee, and she did not resign her Senate seat to the outgoing governor's hands. By holding the seat until the moment she takes the governor's office, she makes the appointment herself — the record of how this works is also the reality of what it means: Tennessee's next senator will not be picked by voters, a party vote or Washington. He will be picked by the woman he is replacing. And the contest for her favor has not been waiting for January: Jacobs and Burchett both spent months campaigning beside her across the state, positioning for this appointment while the governor's race was still being run.
Each contender claims the seat in his own way. Jacobs, asked on the Fox News Rundown podcast whether he would take it, said: "Yeah, obviously it's a huge honor for me, so I would consider it very seriously. I would say that I would do it. Yes, yes, I would." Burchett, who won re-election to the House on Tuesday, claims the working politician's case — he told the Sun he has a poll showing him with a double-digit lead over the other contenders, a million dollars raised in the last quarter and visits to more than sixty counties — and he repeated the ask on Fox News this weekend: "It's totally up to her. I've prayed about it. I'd absolutely take on that role. And if not, I would absolutely run for it in two years." Burchett has also vowed to run in 2028 if Blackburn passes him over. Blackburn's own team claims there is no contest to watch yet: her focus is the transition, and the loudest name in national speculation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, "is not being considered," a person close to her told the Associated Press.
"Every time I saw Marsha, Glenn wasn't very far behind." — Kim Perry, president of Perry Strategies, on Glenn Jacobs
Stated plainly, the principle is this: an appointed senator's first debt is to the person who appointed him, not to the voters, who get no say until 2028. That makes the pick a pure statement of Blackburn's judgment — there is no election result to hide behind if her choice fails.
The consequence is a two-year head start handed to one man in a Senate that will be run by the other party. Democrats will control at least fifty-four seats in the new Senate, according to the Associated Press, so whoever Blackburn sends will govern as a marked Republican incumbent-in-waiting: two years to build a record and a statewide machine before Tennessee voters judge him in the 2028 special election, in a state Blackburn herself carried by less than three points.
So the question that follows is the one the appointment will answer in January: does Blackburn trust the favorite the insiders see at her side, or the congressman who has worked the hardest in public to be chosen?
The details fill out a short list of four. Jacobs left the Knox County mayor's office on September 1, term-limited after two terms; he is a client of Ward Baker, Blackburn's top consultant, Axios reported in September that he was viewed as a top candidate, and President Trump wrote in May that Jacobs has a big political future in Tennessee. The rest of the field, according to a person close to Blackburn, is Burchett; Representative Chuck Fleischmann, in the House since 2011; and Deputy Governor Stuart McWhorter, whom Blackburn tapped to lead her transition team. Burchett carries one complication the operatives name openly: he was one of eight House Republicans who voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023, and two Republican operatives suggested Senate Majority Leader John Thune would probably prefer Blackburn to look elsewhere. Burchett does not deny the streak — he embraces it — and his answer doubles as the clearest statement of where this decision will actually be made: "Gov.-elect Blackburn has made it clear Washington is not making the decision."