Rep. John Rose Fields Questions at Spring Hill Gubernatorial Campaign Stop

Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. John Rose took questions from voters in Spring Hill on Tuesday as part of his “Tennessee True Tour,” pitching his platform and taking swipes at primary challenger Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

Rose has represented Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District since 2019, and formerly served as the state’s agriculture commissioner. 

“When we [Rose and his wife Chelsea] decided that I would run for Congress, we decided you better have an exit strategy from Washington [D.C.], and because you know we've seen a lot of people who get up there and they seem to forget their way back home, and so we decided you know we should pick out the time,” Rose said. “I also think I've got some service left in me."

Blackburn is Rose’s chief opponent in the three-way race that includes State Rep. Monty Fritts (R-Kingston).

“It's not about what Chelsea and I want for the future of Tennessee. It's about what you want, about what Tennesseans want, and the only way we can know that is if we go across the state and visit with you,” Rose told the crowd, pledging that he will “continue to listen to Tennesseans” if elected.

The forum-style event at The Southern Baking Co. drew around 60 people, mostly Republican voters, as well as several elected officials, including former state legislator and now Maury County Mayor Sheila Butt, who introduced Rose.

Rose answered audience questions on note cards, with additional remarks from his wife, Chelsea, and supporters Melissa Gray and Norm Partin, as well as answering one spoken question from an audience member.

“It's not just good enough to elect the Republican,” Partin told the crowd. “There's basically two people in this race: John Rose is running for governor, and Ward Baker's running for governor,” which was a not-so-subtle reference to a NewsChannel 5 report detailing a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into Blackburn’s alleged use of taxpayer resources for her political campaigns.

According to that NC5 story, one unnamed Blackburn staffer called Baker — a Republican political strategist who runs Blackburn’s campaign — a “psychopath,” who staffers allegedly feared would pressure them to cross ethical and legal lines.

Policy talks

Rose said that if elected, his top priorities would include addressing infrastructure needs, expanding access to healthcare, specifically noting public-nonprofit partnerships and freestanding emergency rooms. He also voiced support for economic and educational investments, supporting a “classical approach to education,” and pledging to appoint a “Commissioner of Education who has spent time teaching in a Tennessee classroom.”

Additionally, said that he wants to see a change of leadership in the troubled Department of Children’s Services. 

Rose also spoke about what he said could be potential fraud and other issues in the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), likening efforts to a state version of the short-lived and controversial Federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE.)

Blackburn has also spoken about initiating a Tennessee version of DOGE, if elected.

Rose reiterated his criticism of the state’s courting of Starbucks, which recently established a regional corporate headquarters in Nashville.

Blackburn defended the move in an interview with ABC24 Memphis, claiming that the state will see a return of some $30 million in tax incentives by way of payroll taxes, something that cannot be accurate as reported by The Tennessee Journal, who noted that state law bans a state income tax, an effort that then State Sen. Blackburn supported and touts to this day in her gubernatorial campaign.

Rose pounced on Blackburn’s statements online and in person during Tuesday’s event, where he questioned her understanding of state government, and the culture and politics of the Starbucks. The corporate move will result in some 2,000 new jobs and likely see some of its employees move to Tennessee from the company’s home state of Washington, with Rose saying, “They're not coming here as refugees. They're coming here as missionaries.”

“She's revealing she's so ignorant that she doesn't know what payroll taxes are. Now this is the lady who ‘saved’ us from the income tax single-handedly, with a cape, I think,” Rose said cheekily. 

“So if we're getting it back through payroll taxes, but we don't get payroll taxes, then maybe she means something else. Is she suggesting an income tax for Starbucks employees? Maybe so. I don't know. She's not otherwise explained that, and she's persisted in that explanation now for a couple of weeks, so apparently, not only does she not know what the payroll tax is, but even more frighteningly, her advisors apparently don't know what the payroll tax is, and that ought to really frighten you.”

Rose has also criticized Blackburn’s unwillingness to debate him and Fritts on the issues, when she recently declined to participate in a now-canceled debate at Cumberland University.

“She says she talks to Tennesseans every single day, but I don't think she listens to Tennesseans every day, and that's what Tennesseans are looking for,” Rose told the Williamson Scene.

Tennessee’s next governor will be forced to face increasingly evolving technologies such as AI and the expansion of controversial data centers, something that Rose told the Williamson Scene he would approach with a “sober” mindset.

“I think the state should lead in establishing a framework for looking at these [data centers], but I think ultimately you want it to be locally controlled,” Rose said. 

“I think you want local governments to be able to make the decision about what's right for them, but we ought to give them some structure for looking at those things, because otherwise you're going to have a lot of local communities who probably won't think about all the factors and might get caught flat-footed in terms of how they assess what makes sense for their communities.”

Rose said that he’s not opposed to all data centers, and warned that the total opposition to data centers in the United States could result in adversaries such as China controlling the digital data of Americans.

Rose's family and their support

His wife, Chelsea, took a more prominent role in the event, pitching both her husband’s platform and directly criticizing out-of-state donations to Blackburn's campaign. 

“This door for us is our commitment as a family that if you elect him, we will stay true to Tennessee. We will keep Tennessee true, and that you will be able to recognize this state in 15 and 20 years from now. We are at a turning point, and we need someone who knows Tennessee like the back of their hand because they are Tennessee, and I think that's John,” she said. “We need someone who's going to come in and go to work every day, not treat this as a retirement job. Treat it as the next chapter of the state of Tennessee.”

Rose’s marriage has been scrutinized by some Tennesseans, including allegations (many of which flood his social media comments section) that he pursued or “groomed” his now-wife when she was a high school student in the Future Farmers of America program, which resulted in their meeting.

Rose said that those allegations are “not true.”

The couple married in 2011, just four years after Chelsea graduated from high school, and when Rose was 45.

“I think Tennesseans get this. Love is not about age. It's about a relationship. We've been married for 15 years. We have the same age difference, by the way, as President Trump and Melania Trump, and I think Tennesseans are able to make that assessment, and so I think it's just kind of tacky that some people persist in trying to make that an issue,” he told the Williamson Scene.

While discussing their marriage, Rose jokingly told the crowd that his wife “still accuses me of not being sufficiently romantic,” with Chelsea adding, “The truth is he didn’t have enough initiative, and so I made up for it, and I just asked him out.”