- State
- Tennessee
- Office / race
- U.S. Senate
- Party
- Democratic
- Reviewed
- October 24, 2026
Career timeline
- Won Tennessee’s Democratic Senate nomination.Source ↗
Returning to a statewide contest
Marquita Bradshaw is Tennessee’s Democratic Senate nominee, facing Republican incumbent Bill Hagerty on November 3. Tennessee Lookout describes the race as a rematch of their 2020 contest. Bradshaw comes from environmental organizing and community advocacy, while Hagerty seeks another term after service in business and diplomacy. Her campaign is another attempt to turn grassroots work into statewide office.
Pollution close to home
Bradshaw grew up in South Memphis near the former Memphis Defense Depot, where waste contaminated soil and groundwater. AP reported that her parents organized residents concerned about neighborhood health. That history helps explain the environmental-justice focus of her public career: pollution was a local experience and organizing issue before it became part of a statewide campaign.
A family tradition of organizing
Sowing Justice’s leadership page identifies Bradshaw as its executive director and describes her mother Doris’s work establishing the Defense Depot community committee. It presents environmental health as connected to where people live, study and work. The account places Bradshaw’s activism within a longer neighborhood effort, rather than treating it as an issue adopted only for an election.
Sources: Sowing Justice leadership profile ↗
Building Sowing Justice
The organization says Bradshaw founded Sowing Justice after her first statewide nomination. It describes itself as a nonpartisan nonprofit using civic engagement and citizen science in communities affected by industrial pollution. Its work builds on earlier South Memphis organizations, linking public participation with the technical and political decisions that influence environmental conditions around homes and workplaces.
Development and public accountability
Bradshaw’s campaign describes work on industrial pollution, fossil-fuel infrastructure and data-center development. It argues that residents directly affected by projects should have a meaningful role in decisions about them. That is the organizing approach she wants to carry into federal office: community participation before major choices are made, alongside scrutiny of their health and economic consequences.
The broader Senate platform
Her published priorities extend to affordable health care and housing, stronger public schools, universal broadband, voting rights and climate resilience. She connects those subjects to workers’ rights and economic opportunity. The platform therefore goes beyond environmental regulation, presenting access to services and political participation as part of the same effort to improve conditions for working families across Tennessee.
Prepared with AI assistance. Source-based reporting checked on October 24, 2026. This article does not update automatically. Read our editorial standards.
