About a half-dozen Democrats who flipped Republican congressional seats are doctors and nurses, many of whom made health policy and their opposition to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda central to their campaigns.
Senator-elect Annie Andrews of South Carolina, a pediatrician, repeatedly called out Mr. Kennedy as her “archnemesis.” She and Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan appear to be the first Democrats with medical degrees elected to the Senate in about 60 years.
In California, Representative-elect Richard Pan, a pediatrician and a former state legislator who worked to tighten vaccine exemptions, beat the incumbent, Kevin Kiley, a former Republican who this year ran as an independent.
“This election cycle, R.F.K. Jr. was hands down our No. 1 recruitment and fund-raising tool,” said Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, an organization that spent $30 million to support Democratic scientists and health care professionals.
Other successful health care candidates who flipped House districts include Kristina Knickerbocker, an oncology nurse practitioner in Ohio, and Mitchell Berman, a former Veterans Affairs nurse in Wisconsin. Amish Shah, an emergency room physician, appears to be on track to win in a competitive Arizona district, and Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon, won a safe Democratic seat in New Jersey.
Their success reflects, in part, the overall momentum of Democrats in Tuesday’s election. “It was a good thing to be a Democrat last night,” said Kristoffer Shields, director of the Eagleton Science and Politics Program at Rutgers-New Brunswick. Still, they ran, at least in part, on their credibility as medical professionals, “and it clearly seems to have worked,” he said.
They will join several Democratic medical professionals who have been elected since 2018, when a smaller wave of doctors and scientists ran in opposition to President Trump’s first administration.
“You could see a doctors’ caucus here in the Democratic Party,” Dr. Shields said. Just as the candidates were credible on health care to voters, “they’re going to be credible to other senators, or other representatives, once they get into Congress,” he said. He expects that among their top priorities will be making health care through the Affordable Care Act more affordable, perhaps by reinstating the subsidies that expired last year, and streamlining insurance processes to benefit patients.
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