Tennessee Senior Senator Marsha Blackburn is running to replace Governor Bill Lee in the Volunteer State. The Primary vote is August 6. Until this week, Blackburn has run a quiet but effective campaign. She has now entered Amateur Hour with a new Fortune Cookie crushing commercial. It’s reminiscent of Bless her pea picking heart.

Blackburn has been in elected politics since 1999. First, state politics and then the U.S. Congress and Senate. It has been clear to us locals that she had her eyes set on the Governor’s office for a while. There is not a dadgum thing wrong with ambition.

Marsha is not known for outrageous, showmanship type stunts. Her Fortune Cookie advertisement is out of character. The advertisement has NOT run in rotation in East Tennessee. We are reliably Republican voters. According to Trinity Gentry of the Daily Wire:

Marsha Blackburn’s first appearance on the Tennessee airwaves as she ramps up her run for governor features her literally crushing Chinese fortune cookies.

The longtime Republican lawmaker who just over a year ago was reelected to the U.S. Senate dropped her first statewide ad in her campaign for governor on Wednesday, and is using the spot to promise voters that she will fight to “protect Tennessee land from Chinese front companies.”

“How hard am I gonna crack down on China? Well, here’s a clue,” Blackburn says as she smashes fortune cookies revealing her campaign promises. “It doesn’t take a fortune cookie to figure it out: here in Tennessee we’re going to stop Communist China and protect Tennessee land.”

Here is the Fortune Cookie ad:

The advertisement doesn’t rock my world, but it isn’t aimed at me. She crushes and crumbles cookies, but there is nothing concrete about the ad. It is not as good as her China Plates ad from her Senate reelection campaign. I think her campaign consultants thought that the China Plates ad worked so they thought they could just recycle it to a Fortune Cookie ad:

It’s time to break some China. pic.twitter.com/WMEwcIZZ7F

— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) October 16, 2024

The original Plates ad looked clever. The Cookie ad wasn’t racist as some whiners kvetched, just recycled. And racist according to some Democrat types:

This one of those, tell me you’re a racist without saying you’re a racist moments.

Marsha Blackburn is claiming she’s “Tough on China” while crumbling fortune cookies (Japanese) while sitting next to a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce – also Japanese. pic.twitter.com/gwbXx4o9QX

— Amplify Veracity (@AmplifyVeracity) July 9, 2026

Oh darlin’, we know Fortune Cookies aren’t Chinese. Their provenance is actually debatable. Kikkoman is truly Japanese. Kikkoman is most likely served in Chinese restaurants because the flavor is more palatable to American tastes and because the Chinese didn’t have a big export business many years ago.

Mediaite has more:

Not to mention, despite their association with Chinese restaurants in the United States, fortune cookies are widely believed to have originated in California, not China. While their exact history remains disputed, many historians credit Japanese immigrant Makoto Hagiwara with popularizing the modern fortune cookie at San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden in the early 20th century. A competing claim from a Chinese-American baker in Los Angeles has persisted for decades, but a 1983 “Court of Historical Review” in San Francisco symbolically ruled in Hagiwara’s favor.

This is also from Mediaite. A little frightening, but Trump probably thinks it’s a push between Marsha and John Rose:

Importantly, Trump has maintained that he won’t make an endorsement in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary between Blackburn and Rep. John Rose (R-TN), despite more than $1 million in new PAC ads featuring clips of the president praising her.

A Blackburn pac put those ads together and Trump has praised Blackburn a lot.

If the critics think the Fortune Cookie ad is racist that probably explains why Marsha hasn’t made an ad from this clip:

I can think of an autopen mistake:

“Can you provide a definition for the word 'woman'?" U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn, asked U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“I can’t. Not in this context,” Jackson said. “I’m not a biologist.”

cc: @GOPoversight pic.twitter.com/D8YVyJ2DyJ

— Katie Zacharia (@KatieZacharia) October 28, 2025

Amen. I will proudly vote for Marsha Blackburn for Governor in May. She should pull the recycled Fortune Cookie ad. It’s boring and its been done.

Featured Image: U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/Public Domain