Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. John Rose (R-TN) attends a House Financial Services Committee organizational meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 30, 2019.
In March 2007, 17-year-old high school senior Chelsea Doss (now Chelsea Brooke Rose), traveled four hours from Eagleville to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to participate in the state’s 79th annual Future Farmers of America convention. Over the course of three days, her Eagleville High School chapter competed in the state competition, and nine of its members, including Chelsea, won the State Superior award, a top showing. That wasn’t all. Chelsea also won the State Job Interview contest, and was even named the 2007–2008 Tennessee FFA Association state president.
Among the convention attendees was her future husband, the then vice chairman of the board of the Tennessee FFA and current Tennessee congressman John Rose.
Not even four years later, according to an engagement announcement in the now-defunct local paper the Eagleville Times, the two were married. Chelsea was at the time a 21-year-old college senior at Tennessee Technical University; John was a 45-year-old software executive with a long history of involvement in the Tennessee FFA, a board member of both the FFA and chairman of the board at Chelsea’s college.
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It is a bit awkward to report on the personal details of what is evidently a happy marriage with two young children, and Rose violated no laws. But there is a broader context here. The latest fashion in conservative legislation is “don’t say gay” bills, recently passed in Florida and under consideration in more than two dozen other states, which have various ways of de facto forcing LGBT teachers to remain in the closet. Gay teachers in Texas report that an intense climate of homophobic persecution has developed over recent months.
On top of that, the conservative movement has been hysterically smearing anyone who criticizes these bills, including the entire Disney corporation, as child “groomers.” And a substantial segment of Republican questioning at the confirmation hearings of now-Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was dedicated to her allegedly giving lighter sentences to child sex offenders.
In addition to resurrecting the old-fashioned homophobic libel that all gay people are pedophile perverts, the set of smears around grooming also serve as a dog whistle to QAnon conspiracy theorists, who believe that liberal elites are involved in a vast Satan-worshiping child sex-trafficking ring, and that they will all soon be murdered in a “Day of the Rope”–style mass execution.
Given all of that, it is newsworthy that a powerful conservative Tennessee politician married someone less than half his age, after several connections between the two when the young woman was in high school and college, including the granting of a scholarship to her named after Rose’s parents. One scarcely needs to mention that relationships involving that kind of yawning gap in power and wealth have a problematic history.
Moreover, Rose has not shied away from trafficking in the culture wars himself. Just days ago, he gave a speech on the House floor in opposition to Justice Jackson’s confirmation, which included this line: “I believe Judge Jackson’s repeated leniency in federal sentencing cases towards prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, child sex offenders, and convicted criminal drug traffickers gives us a window into her activist judicial philosophy.”
In addition, Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature recently introduced a bill to create a special privileged class of marriage only available to straight couples with no age requirements—thus quietly legalizing child marriage. (The bill was amended after a media backlash, though gay couples are still excluded.)
Rep. Rose is in Congress, not the legislature. But as the GOP adopts the groomer smear as a go-to tactic to ramp up divisions and smear LGBT Americans, they put their personal behaviors into the public sphere and open for scrutiny.
Rep. Rose’s office did not respond to a number of questions from the Prospect requesting clarification on the origins of the romantic relationship.
IT’S UNCLEAR WHEN EXACTLY the romantic relationship between Doss and Rose began. The Eagleville Times reported that Chelsea has a birthday in August, and Tennessee voter files have an entry for her married name with a birth year of 1989—which was one year after Rose, who was born in February 1965, graduated from Tennessee Technical University. The Times also reported that Chelsea had a meeting with then–Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen in January 2008, where Rose was present. She would have been an 18-year-old college freshman at the time, while he was 42.
They possibly met even earlier. A Tennessee Future Farmers of America press release from 2014 notes that Doss “began her involvement with FFA in 2003,” as a high school freshman. Eagleville’s FFA chapter was a formidable one, named Overall Mid-state District Champions at the state FFA convention all four years that Chelsea was involved (and 17 straight years preceding that).
Not long after her triumph at the 2007 FFA convention, Doss received the Jerry and Betty Williams Rose Scholarship, named after Rose’s parents, to attend Tennessee Tech after graduating high school. She was very grateful for that support in a 2010 interview with the Murfreesboro Post, from before the two were married.
“John has made everything possible that I’ve done in FFA beyond high school. Through the scholarship that he provides, I’ve not had to have a job through college,” Chelsea said, indicating that the scholarship was secured before she arrived on campus as a freshman. “I’ve been able to train, improve, focus on FFA and focus on school. That scholarship has made all the difference,” she continued. “[John] has also coached me during my preparation, which has been extremely helpful.”
Chelsea wouldn’t turn 18 until August of her freshman year. At the same time, Rose was also sitting on the board of Tennessee Technical University. He was named chairman of the Board of Directors in April 2007, one month after the 2007 Tennessee FFA convention, and served in that role throughout the entirety of Chelsea’s time at TTU, including at the time of their 2011 marriage. Rep. Rose’s office didn’t respond to questions about the congressman’s role in awarding Chelsea the Rose family scholarship.
Rose, meanwhile, is a lifelong volunteer and “life member” of FFA, having served as the state FFA vice president and Cookeville FFA president, and earned the American FFA Degree. He served as a board member for the Tennessee FFA from 1996 through 2014, including stints as secretary, vice chairman of the board, and alumni council president, all in the early and mid-2000s. He met with the Eagleville High School FFA as recently as six weeks ago.
Rose recently tweeted that he has attended every FFA state conference for the past 35 years, which would place him in attendance at the 2007 state conference where high schooler Chelsea Doss was voted state president. At the time, Rose was right in the middle of a four-year term as state FFA vice chairman, between 2005 and 2009.
There is no documentary evidence confirming that Rose, as vice chairman, met the FFA convention’s contest winner and upcoming president in 2007. But in a 2018 press release, Rose boasts about helping out top FFA members. And he did eventually meet Chelsea within a short time frame. Chelsea would later serve as a national officer for FFA in 2009, while Rose was still serving as state vice chairman.
All this hasn’t exactly been a secret in Tennessee. A source familiar with state legislative politics confirmed that Rose’s marriage had been discussed in the state capital as early as 2017. And realistically, people gossip.
Rose’s marriage is positively quaint compared to other Republican stories. There’s Donald Trump’s reported habit of walking in on teenage models in their dressing rooms and numerous allegations accusing him of sexual assault; or former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (the longest-serving Republican speaker in history) admitting to molesting children; or the six different former high school wrestlers who allege that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) knew the team doctor was sexually abusing students and did nothing; or virtually the whole Republican Party standing behind Roy Moore when he was running for Senate in Alabama and accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl many years previously.
This sits uncomfortably with the party, from the conservative grassroots and media arms to the highest levels in Washington, working itself into an enraged frenzy over invented claims of leniency against sex offenders and dubious accusations of pedophilia.
At the heart of the questions about Rose’s marriage is the power he wielded over his bride-to-be, both financial power and power over her future educational and career prospects. It may be less salacious than other Republican scandals. But given the Republican monomania over protecting children, it must be part of the discussion.
