Marsha Blackburn brimmed with enthusiasm when she introduced Mitch Graves at a Senate confirmation hearing last fall.
A veteran Memphis healthcare executive, Graves had been nominated by President Trump to serve on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Blackburn left no doubt she was solidly behind the president’s pick.
“He represents the best of Tennessee’s business and civic leadership,’’ Senator Blackburn told her colleagues in formally introducing Graves, the CEO of the West Cancer Center & Research Institute. “And I’m confident that his experience and dedication will continue to serve our state and nation well.”
What Blackburn didn’t say was that days earlier, she had accepted more than $58,000 from Graves and five of his associates at the West Cancer Center for her then recently opened campaign for Tennessee governor.
Though legal, the campaign donations trouble critics who say these types of financial gifts give the appearance that our government is for sale, eroding the public’s faith in our democratic system.
“It taints government officials as to who they’re paying attention to,’’ said Craig Holman, a legislative representative for Public Citizen, a left-leaning government ethics watchdog group.
“They’re supposed to work in the public interest, but when they have to rely on money from private individuals and private sources, they lose sight of the public interest. And now they’re promoting really the private interests of whoever gives them the most amount of money. And that will not be the American public.”
The Senate later confirmed Graves, who now serves as the influential board chairman at TVA, the federally owned power company that provides electricity to some 10 million people across Tennessee and six other states. Board members earn a reported $60,000 to $70,000 a year.
Graves isn’t an isolated case.
An analysis of federal and state campaign finance reports by the Institute for Public Service Reporting found that four of President Trump’s nominees to the TVA board made generous campaign contributions to a series of Republican politicians, including three GOP senators, while their senate confirmation proceedings were underway. Two of the three senators who accepted these campaign contributions — Blackburn and her fellow Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty — had pushed Trump to fire several TVA board members, creating vacancies on the board.
In one case, Randall Jones, an insurance agent and nominee from Alabama, gave $20,000 in donations to the gubernatorial campaign of that state’s Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville endorsed Jones with high praise at his confirmation hearing. Jones’ company, Randy Jones & Associates, gave another $5,000 to Tuberville on October 27, 2025, five days after the senate hearing and while the confirmation process was still underway.
The Institute’s analysis also found that Knoxville lawyer Jeff Hagood, another Trump nominee who joined the TVA board in January, gave Blackburn’s gubernatorial campaign $10,600 last October. That donation came less than three weeks before the Oct. 22, 2025 hearing of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, where Blackburn spoke glowingly of both Graves and Hagood.
Graves, Hagood and Jones were confirmed by the Senate on December 18.
A fourth nominee, former Nashville auto executive Lee Beaman, gave Blackburn’s campaign $10,600, records show. That same day — Aug. 21, 2025 — Beaman’s wife Julie gave another $10,600. Those donations came about 15 weeks before Blackburn introduced Beaman to the Senate committee that December, saying he had “demonstrated a longstanding commitment to giving back financially to causes that support Tennesseans, and make their lives and our communities better”.
A major Republican donor who over the years has given more than $170,000 to Blackburn’s political campaigns, Beaman failed to win Senate confirmation amid strong opposition from Democrats.
The Institute made multiple attempts to seek comment from Blackburn, Hagerty, Tuberville, Graves, Hagood, Jones, Beaman and others mentioned in this article but none responded. A phone message and email left for Tennessee Republican Party Chair Scott Golden, who once served as then-Congresswoman Blackburn’s deputy chief of staff, also went unanswered. The White House, too, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A similar review of contributions to the gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Jerri Green, who faces Blackburn in Tuesday’s governor’s election, found no contributions from current TVA board members or the recent nominees.
Series of payments before hearing
In addition to Mitch Graves’ long career in the healthcare industry, he had served since 2016 on the board of Memphis Light, Gas & Water, TVA’s largest customer.
On July 1, 2025, Trump nominated Graves to the TVA board along with Hagood and Beaman, stirring instant applause from Blackburn and Hagerty.
“The Tennessee Valley Authority is a critical part of our nation’s energy security, and we are pleased that President Trump has nominated three competent and visionary Tennesseans to the board who will help achieve America’s nuclear renaissance and deliver affordable and abundant energy,’’ the senators said in a joint statement. “These nominees are a strong departure from the Biden-era TVA board which failed to meet the moment. We urge colleagues to swiftly confirm President Trump’s TVA board nominees to make certain the United States leads the world in next-generation nuclear and wins the global race for energy dominance.”
Then the campaign donations started pouring in.
Over eight days that October, Graves and his colleagues at the West Cancer Center made a series of contributions to Blackburn.
On October 7, West Cancer Center’s chairman emeritus Kurt Tauer and chief medical officer Sylvia Richey gave Blackburn $10,600 each, the maximum allowed under Tennessee law. Five days later, on October 12, chief financial officer James Cagle gave $10,600 and oncologist Jason Chandler gave $5,300. Then, on October 14, Graves and chief operating officer Candace Wilder donated $10,600 each.
The limit for an individual’s contribution to a candidate running for a statewide election in Tennessee, such as the governor’s race, is $10,600 — $5,300 for the primary and another $5,300 for the general election.
Graves and the other West Cancer Center employees and officials have made campaign contributions to politicians in the past, but the contributions made in 2025 to Blackburn’s campaign stand out for their scale. The campaign contributions made by Graves and his five colleagues to all candidates in federal races or statewide elections in Tennessee totaled $31,300 in 2023 and $17,500 in 2024. In contrast, in those eight days in October 2025, Graves and his five colleagues contributed $58,300 to Blackburn’s campaign.
According to Public Citizens’ Holman, the contributions also stand out for their timing.
“The timing of it is very funny,’’ said Holman, who favors replacing the country’s private campaign contribution system with public financing of elections. “The timing of it reveals exactly what the purpose of private campaign contributions are all about. And that is to curry favor with public officials. That’s exactly what’s going on here. These individuals and businesses are actually endearing themselves to Blackburn with very sizable contributions.”
Graves joined TVA’s board of directors in January. In March, the TVA announced that the board had selected him to become its chair through April 1, 2027. Hagood was appointed the chair-elect, and is scheduled to succeed Graves as chair, serving in the role through May 2029.
Longtime TVA critic Stephen Smith said news of the contributions Blackburn accepted doesn’t surprise him. Though he hasn’t seen anything quite like this in his 30 years of studying TVA, times have changed, he said. Trump has set a new tone of questionable conduct in government, and loyalists like Blackburn are simply following his lead, he said.
“It’s all pay for play now with Trump,’’ said Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a Knoxville-based nonprofit. “So, they’re just going along with the zeitgeist of the day… Marsha Blackburn is so allegiant to Trump. She is probably one of the tightest MAGA acolytes of Trump.’’
Contributions to Hagerty, Kustoff
Plans to retool TVA’s board stretch back to the early days of Trump’s second presidency.
On March 20, 2025, senators Blackburn and Hagerty published an op-ed in Power Magazine calling on President Trump to revamp the board.
“The presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed, TVA Board of Directors lacks the talent, experience, and gravitas to meet a challenge that clearly requires visionary industrial leaders,’’ Blackburn and Hagerty wrote in the article. “The group looks more like a collection of political operatives than visionary industrial leaders.”
Two days earlier, on March 18, Graves had made a campaign contribution of $800 to Hagerty. His wife Kelly Jo had made another contribution — $5,000 — to the senator on the same day.
Trump responded to the appeal by the Tennessee senators by firing three of the TVA’s board members. On July 1, 2025, he nominated four new members — Graves, Hagood, Beaman, and Jones.
Since then, TVA has reversed several changes from the Biden era and earlier. It has backed away from renewable energy and reversed the planned closing of major coal plants.
The TVA board’s role has assumed greater political significance in recent months as it sets electricity rates for a burgeoning number of data centers in these states. For instance, in February, the TVA board of directors that included Graves and Hagood voted unanimously to double the amount of electricity Elon Musk’s xAI data center operations in Memphis can take from the TVA grid. In August, the TVA board imposed a 10% increase in electricity rates for AI data centers.
In October 2025, Hagerty helped introduce Graves and Hagood to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, alongside Blackburn. Hagerty said, “Mitch Graves and Jeff Hagood understand the responsibility before them. They recognize that TVA’s role in deploying advanced nuclear technologies is central to not just Tennessee’s prosperity, but to America’s national security and global competitiveness.”
While the Senate confirmation proceedings were still underway, on November 10, Graves made a $4,000 contribution to Hagerty’s campaign.
David Kustoff, a Republican member of the U.S. House from Tennessee, also supported Graves’ nomination and submitted a formal letter in support of him. During the hearing, Graves thanked Kustoff for his support. On March 19, the day after Graves and his wife had made campaign contributions to Hagerty, Graves contributed $5,000 to Kustoff. That same day, Graves’ colleague and the CFO of West Cancer Center, James Cagle, also gave $3,500 to Kustoff.
On December 9, 2025, less than two weeks before the Senate was to vote on Graves’ nomination, West Cancer Center’s chairman emeritus Tauer donated $2,000 to Kustoff.
Graves was confirmed by the Senate, along with Hagood, on December 18.
In a press release the following day, Kustoff congratulated Graves on the appointment. He wrote, “I applaud the U.S. Senate’s vote today confirming Mitch Graves to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)’s Board of Directors. President Trump made an outstanding choice nominating Mitch Graves for the TVA Board of Directors.” Kustoff concluded, “Thank you to Senator Marsha Blackburn and Senator Bill Hagerty for their support of this important nomination.”
