Former Ambassador Lynda Blanchard is holding a fundraiser for her U.S. Senate campaign at former President Donald Trump’s resort Saturday night in Mar-A-Lago, Florida.
The fundraiser and dinner are being hosted by retired ambassadors Robin Bernstein, J. Randolph Evans, Ronald Gidwitz, Robert Kohorst, Lana Marks, Jamie McCourt, Edward T. McMullen, John Rakolta Jr., Carla Sands and Donald Tapia.
The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Richard Shelby, who has announced his retirement at the end of this term, is a conservative Montgomery area businesswoman and former U.S. ambassador to Slovenia for the Trump administration.
Blanchard has already committed $5 million of her own money to the race and has begun commercials.
“Our new campaign ad outlines who I am, where I stand, and why I am running as a Christian, conservative, Trump Republican,” Blanchard said. “The career politicians, Washington insiders, and establishment RINOs are much better known than a first-time, outsider candidate like me, so it is important to begin sharing our message early and highlighting my 100% commitment to President Trump and his MAGA agenda.”
The commercial will be airing statewide during game coverage of the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament and also on Fox News Chanel. This is part of an initial $100,000, three-week ad buy that Blanchard has placed. Blanchard’s campaign has also reserved an additional $3 million of television airtime between March 8, 2022, and May 24, 2022, ahead of the Republican primary.
“I have known Lynda and her husband John for a number of years,” said Republican insider and Trump loyalist Perry Hooper Jr., R-Montgomery. “They are friends and what I like to say, ‘good people.’ Lynda is not a politician. She is a great mother, businesswoman and humanitarian. Being born on July 4th maybe it was her destiny to serve her country. She was an outstanding Ambassador to Melania Trump’s home country Slovenia.”
“Now she will be a force to be reckoned with in this Senate race,” Hooper said. “Alabama has no use for establishment beltway candidates as businessman Donald Trump and Coach Tommy Tuberville proved and she certainly fits this mold. She is an unabashed patriot and Trump loyalist. When I was looking for a host for a fundraiser for Donald Trump Jr.’s America First PAC she stepped right up to the plate and put on an outstanding and successful event. I can easily see her as Alabama’s next Junior Senator.”
Republican strategist Jackie Curtiss Cox said: “She is a very impressive woman. … Her and her husband have donated $millions to Republican candidates across the country in recent years, but she is not that well known in Alabama.”
Blanchard has committed enormous personal resources to her Senate campaign.
Cox cautioned: “Buying a seat did not work out well for Jeff Coleman or Will Brooks.”
Coleman and Will Brooks were both extremely successful businessmen. Coleman lost a primary race for Congress in the 2nd Congressional District to now-Congressman Barry Moore in 2020. Brooks lost to Gary Palmer for the open 6th Congressional District seat in 2014.
“If you’re sick of career politicians, insiders, and swamp creatures that stand for socialism or cheerlead censorship, then I’m asking for your vote to stand strong for Alabama by sending a true outsider to the Senate,” Blanchard said in her campaign announcement. “My pledge to you is simple: together, guided by God’s blessings and your support, we will give the Swamp a heckuva dose of the common sense and conservative principle that it needs to truly ‘Make America Great Again’ – just like President Trump did.”
Blanchard’s campaign is being led by Jeff Roe and Ethan Zorfas of Axiom Strategies, who served as the lead consultants on now-Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s successful campaign in 2020.
The 61-years-old former ambassador is a successful businesswoman, a lifelong Alabama resident, who co-founded B&M Management, a Montgomery-based real estate investment management company currently valued at more than $1 billion, in 1998.
Blanchard is the co-founder and CEO of the 100X Development Foundation. The foundation seeks innovative ways to combat child poverty and is responsible for establishing orphanages, creating sustainable food production programs and funding on-going charitable efforts that have improved the lives of thousands of families in 16 countries around the globe.
She is the mother of eight. She is a board member of several charities and education programs. Blanchard has a degree in mathematics and computer science from Auburn University and is fluent in five computer programming languages.
