Description
Sitting in a redecorated Nashville restaurant styled to evoke a Chinese takeout spot, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn crushes fortune cookies with her hands while vowing to "stop Communist China" and "protect Tennessee land," a spot her campaign released as part of her Tennessee gubernatorial bid and paid for by her own campaign committee. The ad follows a similar theme from her 2024 Senate campaign, in which she smashed ceramic plates bearing the Chinese flag and threatened to make the country "pay" for COVID-19, and it has drawn criticism from journalists, commentators, and members of Tennessee's Asian American community who call the imagery, including a gong sound effect and a Japanese "beckoning cat" figurine, racially stereotyped and inaccurate, since fortune cookies are widely believed to have originated in California rather than China. Blackburn has defended the ad as a statement against the Chinese Communist Party rather than the Chinese people, and the spot has become a flashpoint in the race to succeed term-limited Republican Governor Bill Lee, drawing a parody response fortune-cookie ad from Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell.
This is part of Jim Heath's Campaign Ads '26 project, building a permanent public archive of 2026 campaign ads, the money behind them, and the attacks voters may never see in their own state.