John Tanner was born at the Dyersburg Army Air Base in Halls, Tennessee, and grew up in Obion County. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in business administration and a law degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he also played basketball.

Rep. Tanner was honorably discharged from the Navy at the rank of Lieutenant. He later retired from the Tennessee Army National Guard at the rank of Colonel.

Tanner served 12 years in the Tennessee House of Representatives and was sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989. He is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Congressman Tanner led the formation of a group of solution-oriented moderate to conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition. The Blue Dogs joke that they are “yellow-dog Democrats” who have been squeezed so tightly by those on the far left and the far right that they have turned blue.

Tanner is Vice President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the civilian arm of the NATO Alliance.

John lives in Union City with his wife, the former Betty Ann Portis of Huntingdon, Tennessee. They have two children, Elizabeth Tanner Atkins and John Portis Tanner, and two grandchildren, Abby Frances Atkins and Tanner Lantrip Atkins.

Tennessee’s 8^th Congressional District runs from the northern Memphis suburbs north along the Mississippi River to the Kentucky state line and east to include southern Clarksville before stretching south to Dickson then southwest roughly along Interstate 40 to Shelby County. The 8^th District includes all of Benton, Carroll, Crockett, Dickson, Dyer, Gibson, Haywood, Henry, Houston, Humphreys, Lake, Lauderdale, Madison, Obion, Stewart, Tipton and Weakley counties, as well as portions of Montgomery and Shelby counties.