Nirav Shah understands that not everyone agrees with how he led the state of Maine through the coronavirus pandemic. And he is happy to admit that he made some mistakes.
That, he argues, is why he should be governor.
“I have taken tough questions about covid, and as a result, I am a better leader,” said Shah, a leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Maine who ran the state’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 2019 to 2023. “If I knew then what I know now, what would I have done differently?” he said. “I think one of the reasons why my candidacy has traction is that I’ve been very open about it.”
Shah is one of a small but growing group of doctors and public health officials who helped helm their states through the coronavirus pandemic and are now either holding or running for office. Their candidacies offer a test for how those involved in the pandemic response discuss their work, how the public feels about the more controversial actions taken in the name of keeping people safe and whether voters will be turned off by memories of the dark period.
Decisions made during the coronavirus pandemic remain notably polarizing, with polls finding one of the only areas of widespread agreement is that the pandemic “did more to drive the country apart than to bring it together.” Democrats and Republicans are divided on support for required vaccinations in response to the pandemic, whether institutions came up short on protecting people and if government officials gave too little consideration to individual choice, according to a 2025 survey by the Pew Research Center.
But those doctors turned candidates argue that they will be judged more as comforters during a crisis than on a set of policies.
The pandemic turned public health officials in these states into overnight statewide celebrities — and, in some cases, villains. Epidemiologists were often the face of their state’s response, holding hours-long briefings that detailed what officials were doing and, for some, providing stability during a particularly unstable time. That phenomenon created a deep reservoir of support, and some antipathy, for these doctors.
The vast majority of candidates associated with the pandemic are Democrats — a reflection of the party’s lean into science in the face of Republican attacks and the rise of vaccine-skeptic Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. While the majority of doctors in Congress are Republicans, like Sens. Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), their party has collectively moved against many of the actions that were taken to combat the deadly coronavirus, especially rules about masking in public and prolonged school closures, Democrats’ largest vulnerability around the pandemic.
“If I knew then what I know now about schools, I would have approached things differently,” Shah said in an interview with The Washington Post. While he defended the state’s record on school closures — which were shorter than those in other states — “in hindsight, everything’s easy, but I would have done things differently.”
He also said he should have been clearer in explaining that other guidelines were subject to updating as understanding of the virus shifted. Many voters and some political figures criticized the changing guidance related to masking and quarantines.
“It’s a really interesting test,” said Josh Green, a doctor and the governor of Hawaii, who worked as the state’s covid response point person when he served as lieutenant governor. “There’s no question that regions view the covid response differently, but the real litmus test is whether they perceive the candidate as a caring physician or someone who can connect to their community.”
Green, who won his first term as governor in 2022, credits his role in the pandemic response with his victory. “I ended up bonding with the entire population,” he said. The Democrat is the overwhelming favorite to win reelection later this year.
Amy Acton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor in Ohio, represents a unique test of this dynamic.
The former director of the Ohio Department of Health became a hero to some for her work steering the Republican-controlled state through the pandemic. But she also faced charged, personal protests, including by armed men at her home, for her decisions.
“I am very proud of the way we worked in a very nonpartisan way,” Acton said.
Some of her decisions were controversial. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), acting on Acton’s advice, was the first governor to shut down schools statewide, and the state called off its presidential primary in March 2020 mere hours before polls were supposed to open. Acton resigned her public health role in 2020, citing a refusal to sign certain health orders that she feared “would have killed people,” she said in a local TV interview.
Acton has been reticent when asked whether she made any mistakes as she led Ohio through the pandemic, and, in a nod to the politics of her state, which has backed President Donald Trump every time he has been on the ballot, she has said her work was done alongside DeWine.
Republicans, however, are eager to use the response against her.
“It is clearly her number one negative with Republicans, by far. It is what she is known for,” said Shannon Burns, the head of Strongsville GOP, a grassroots Republican organization outside Cleveland. “Quite frankly, she is public enemy number one in the Republican base.”
Where Shah is facing a crowded Democratic primary in a state that has leaned to the left for decades, the politics are more complicated for Acton, said multiple operatives working in Ohio. Acton has a well of support for her high-profile leadership, but she also faces a vocal, motivated opposition that her would-be Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, could activate.
“There is an enormous swath of Ohioans who have very positive feelings about her and her leadership,” said Aaron Pickrell, a top adviser to Barack Obama’s two successful Ohio campaigns. “That cuts the other way, too. Now people are asking why did we do this, and why did we do that. And they try to make her the face of it.”
Not all operatives agree with this view. Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, a group aimed at helping doctors and scientists seek higher office, said his group is “not seeing a backlash to covid” in either Acton’s or Shah’s campaigns.
“If anything, we think of the positives being they’ve introduced themselves to their states; they’ve led with evidence, facts and compassion; and they’ve saved lives,” said Polyak, whose group has endorsed both candidates.
That has been Shah’s and Acton’s experience from some corners of their states. Both public health officials were turned into bobbleheads during covid. Acton has been seen as a top Democratic recruit in Ohio since she left her public health position. And Shah recalled how a candy store in Freeport, Maine, created the “Shah Bar” to honor his work for the state.
“They know me, they have a bond with me,” he said.
Shah, however, said the negative sentiment about the pandemic response was “definitely a consideration” when he was deciding to run, because he worried “that negative sentiment would be overwhelming such that the other positive messages that I like to talk about around health care and education … would be drowned out.”
“That remains a risk,” he said, “and anyone who tries to brush that aside is not being honest or real.”
The post They ushered their states through covid. Now they want to lead them. appeared first on Washington Post.
