In the 1990s, Dave Hatley found a checkbook in a condo he was renting. His tanning bed business was struggling, and he used the checkbook to write bad checks to cover the cost of expanding it. He was convicted of bank fraud and served a month in federal prison.

He has written about it since, at length, in a memoir he gives away free on his campaign website. He calls it "the stupidest decision of my life."

Hatley is now running for governor of Tennessee as an independent. And Marsha Blackburn's campaign has paid to build a website that leads with that month in prison, nearly thirty years on.

What the site is

The header calls him "Deadbeat Dave," over a photograph edited to put him in a black-and-white striped prison uniform and cap, standing in a prison yard under the words "Felon. Fraud. Not to be trusted." Two more photos on the site are edited the same way. At the foot of the page sits an audio player loaded with the reggae song "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle.

"David Hatley isn't just a businessman with a checkered past. He's a convicted felon," the site reads. "Tennessee cannot afford a felon running the state."

At the bottom is the disclaimer that makes it hers: "Paid for by and authorized by Marsha for Governor."

Six Rivers Media asked Blackburn's campaign to confirm they launched it. The campaign did not respond.

This is a departure for her. Through her primary against U.S. Rep. John Rose, the attacks on her opponent were handled mostly by political action committees, at arm's length. This one has her name on it.

The felon she does want running things

Eight years ago, Marsha Blackburn voted for the First Step Act — the federal criminal justice law built on the premise that people who serve their sentences should get a route back. It passed the House 358 to 36 on December 20, 2018, and Blackburn voted yes.

The president who signed it into law was Donald Trump. Blackburn has run on her loyalty to him.

On May 30, 2024, a New York jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He was sentenced to an unconditional discharge, which means no punishment — but the conviction stands on his record.

Thirty-four felony counts, and Blackburn wants him running the country. A bank fraud conviction and a month served in the 1990s, and Tennessee "cannot afford a felon running the state."

We have written before about what happens when a senator votes against that same second-chance law and then has to explain his state's prisons. Blackburn has the opposite problem. She voted for it.

The other charges on the site

The website also raises a 2008 bankruptcy Hatley filed for Great Spa Manufacturing Co., a personal bankruptcy he filed shortly after, and documents showing $7.7 million in tax liens for unpaid taxes.

"If Hatley couldn't keep his own tax affairs straight, why should Tennesseans trust him with theirs?" the site asks.

Hatley says all of it was settled and closed nearly a decade ago.

"A calendar would have ruined the whole document," he said.

What Hatley said back

His response to the opposition research was that he had already published it himself.

"Senator Blackburn's team spent a lot of money to tell Tennessee a story I already told them myself. So, her packet isn't a revelation. It's a book report."

And on the broader point:

"There are people all over this state carrying something. They've been taught it's the end of their story. It isn't. You are not defined by the worst thing you ever did. You're defined by who you decide to be afterward."

A spokesperson for his campaign read the site as a sign of trouble in Blackburn's numbers, saying she is "running scared" and that her internal polling shows what theirs does.

The pattern

This is not the first time Blackburn's campaign has reached for the cheap version of an attack. In July her campaign put out a fortune cookie ad in which she smashed fortune cookies to show she would stop communist China. She has also refused to say whether she will debate in this race.

A photoshopped prison jumpsuit and a reggae soundtrack are what a campaign produces when it wants the voter to feel something about a man rather than learn something about him. The underlying fact — a bad-check conviction from the 1990s, a month served — was already public, because Hatley published it.

The bottom line

Marsha Blackburn's gubernatorial campaign paid for and authorized a website that nicknames independent candidate Dave Hatley "Deadbeat Dave," photoshops him into a prison uniform, and declares that "Tennessee cannot afford a felon running the state" — over a 1990s bank fraud conviction for which he served one month and about which he wrote a memoir he gives away free. On December 20, 2018, Blackburn voted for the First Step Act, the second-chance law signed by Donald Trump, who was himself convicted of 34 felonies in 2024 and whom Blackburn continues to back. Her campaign did not answer reporters who asked whether the site is hers, though the site itself says so.

Source

Blackburn funds attack site targeting independent rival Hatley — Ben Smith, Six Rivers Media / Johnson City Press, September 10, 2026.