Democrats launch effort to get 100 doctors into elected office
Leaders of 314 Action, which has worked to elect several physicians such as Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Washington), say they plan to recruit and support dozens of doctors in upcoming bids for statehouses, federal office, governorships — and potentially the White House. The group's new campaign, dubbed 'Guardians of Public Health," comes after all four GOP physicians in the Senate voted for long-time anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as the nation's health secretary and amid the Trump administration's efforts to unwind an array of public-health initiatives.
'Our goal is to find 100 excellent thought leaders on health care and science and see if they will serve in office,' said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, who is the only Democratic physician currently leading a state, and is co-chairing 314 Action's new campaign. 'If we have had physicians, nurses, social workers with a public background in greater numbers this year, we would have chosen a different HHS secretary.'
Republican doctors have long outnumbered their Democratic counterparts in Congress. Three of the Senate's four GOP physicians currently hold leadership roles, with Sen. John Barrasso (Wyoming) serving as the Senate whip and Sens. Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) serving as chairmen of committees. Meanwhile, it has been 55 years since a Democratic physician served in the Senate, according to the Senate historical office.
Republican physicians also played major roles during Kennedy's recent confirmation fight. After publicly wrestling with whether to support Kennedy, Cassidy ultimately said that he believed Kennedy — who has a large personal following — could help restore trust in America's health system; the Louisiana doctor's vote helped ensure Kennedy's confirmation. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), a fellow physician, launched a new 'MAHA' caucus to support Kennedy's ambitions.
Other Republicans pointed to their colleagues' credentials as a way to burnish the candidacy of Kennedy, who was opposed by outside public health experts and physicians who attended his confirmation hearings, protesting his track record of vaccine skepticism. Kennedy has denied that he is anti-vaccine.
'Let the record state there are three medical doctors on this side of the dais,' Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), a chemical engineer, told Kennedy at one of his confirmation hearings last month, where Daines was flanked by Barrasso, Cassidy and Marshall. 'We believe in science. I'm thankful that you do too.'
314 Action leaders say that the GOP has wrongly claimed the mantle of science and that their new campaign will work to wrest it back. The group — which takes its name from pi or π, the mathematical constant that is equivalent to 3.14 — backed Democratic doctors, such as freshmen Reps. Herb Conaway (D-New Jersey), Maxine Dexter (D-Oregon) and Kelly Morrison (D-Minnesota) in their successful campaigns last year.
'We're very good at electing doctors,' said Josh Morrow, the group's executive director, saying that the upcoming initiative would draw on lessons from past campaigns, such as highlighting the trust that many voters express for their personal physicians. Morrow said that funding for 314 Action's upcoming campaign would come mostly from grassroots support.
314 Action is currently supporting Amy Acton, a physician and former Ohio public health official, in her campaign to serve as governor of Ohio.
Democratic physicians currently in office have said they are worried about declining confidence in public health institutions and upset that their GOP colleagues supported Kennedy, particularly given evidence of rising vaccine hesitancy. Texas is currently dealing with its worst measles outbreak in three decades, and an unvaccinated child has died of the vaccine-preventable disease.
'I don't see how any physician would be able to have someone like [Kennedy] lead the agency responsible for public health," Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-California), an emergency-medicine physician, said in an recent interview. "Vaccines are our most effective public health interventions.'
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