Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell released a new campaign advertisement parodying U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn’s (R-TN) recent anti-China gubernatorial campaign commercial, prompting a swift response from the senator, who accused the mayor of trying to distract voters from his record on illegal immigration.
O’Connell’s mayoral re-election ad recreates the setting of Blackburn’s original commercial at Nashville’s Elliston Place Soda Shop, where the senator filmed her anti-China campaign ad in a staged Chinese restaurant.
While Blackburn’s advertisement featured the senator smashing fortune cookies as she pledged to “crack down on China,” O’Connell’s version opens with the mayor calmly cracking open a fortune cookie.
The fortune inside reads, “Fear divides. Nashville unites.”
O’Connell’s ad released Sunday is a direct parody of Blackburn’s campaign commercial, in which the senator declared, “How hard am I gonna crack down on China? Well, here’s a clue,” before a narrator said she would protect Tennessee land from Chinese front companies, close loopholes, and “hunt down every communist who tries to defy us.”
Blackburn concluded the ad by stating, “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.”
Blackburn responded shortly after O’Connell released the advertisement, arguing the mayor was attempting to shift attention away from his handling of immigration issues in Nashville.
“Spare me, Mayor Freddie O’Connell. While you try to distract Tennesseans from the truth, here’s the reality: you’ve put ICE agents in harm’s way by doxxing them, and you’ve had no problem giving away more than $1 million of Tennesseans’ hard-earned tax dollars to pro-illegal alien groups,” Blackburn wrote.
Spare me, Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
While you try to distract Tennesseans from the truth, here's the reality: you've put ICE agents in harm's way by doxxing them, and you've had no problem giving away more than $1 million of Tennesseans' hard-earned tax dollars to pro-illegal… pic.twitter.com/EPmaN5iAxY
— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) July 13, 2026
The senator said the fortune cookie featured in O’Connell’s ad should have read, “Freddie O’Connell puts illegal aliens over Tennesseans.”
Immigration enforcement has become one of Blackburn’s primary lines of attack against the Nashville mayor.
In a recent interview with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and editor-in-chief, Michael Patrick Leahy, Blackburn criticized Metro Nashville’s appropriations totaling approximately $1.5 million to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) and Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors (TNJFON), arguing taxpayer dollars should not be used to provide services benefiting illegal immigrants.
“No mayor should be using taxpayer money for services for illegal immigrants. That just should not happen,” Blackburn said during an appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “We don’t have sanctuary cities in this state. It is illegal to have a sanctuary city. So for a mayor to use their funds for illegal aliens and not for taxpayers, in my opinion, that is wrong.”
Blackburn’s comments followed reporting by The Star that Metro Nashville’s own records showed the Metro Clerk’s Office did not possess records related to the proposed grants when responding to public records requests seeking documentation supporting the appropriations.
Last year, Blackburn also heavily criticized O’Connell over an executive order issued following a joint U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Tennessee Highway Patrol operation in Nashville that resulted in the arrests of 196 alleged criminal illegal immigrants. The amended order required Metro employees to report contacts with federal immigration officials to the mayor and Metro’s Office of New Americans.
After Metro’s Office of New Americans subsequently published the names of federal immigration officials and details of their interactions with local agencies pursuant to the executive order, Blackburn introduced the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act. The legislation would make it a federal crime to publicly release the names of federal law enforcement officers with the intent to obstruct criminal investigations or immigration enforcement operations.
The bill would create a new federal offense carrying penalties of up to five years in prison, a fine, or both for individuals who intentionally disclose the identities of federal law enforcement officers to interfere with immigration enforcement.
At the time of announcing the legislation, Blackburn said it would “hold blue city mayors accountable for obstructing enforcement of our immigration laws by putting law enforcement officers in harm’s way.”
In addition to introducing the legislation, Blackburn also formally requested at the time a federal investigation into O’Connell and his administration for allegedly obstructing federal immigration enforcement operations in Nashville.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Freddie O’Connell” by Freddie O’Connell.
