In a cycle that 314 Action Fund founder Shaughnessy Naughton described as a health care election, candidates with medical and scientific backgrounds notched decisive victories across the country. More than 80 percent of the congressional candidates backed by the pro-science political action committee won their races, including Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, and South Carolina senator-elect Annie Andrews, a pediatrician. These doctors and scientists midterm wins signal a notable shift in who voters are sending to Washington.
A Wave of Data-Driven Candidates
The political action committee, founded by Naughton after her own 2016 congressional loss, spent more than $30 million this cycle on donations and campaign support. That included $3.6 million raised for Andrews’s Senate bid in South Carolina and $3 million for Amy Acton, the physician who won Ohio’s governor race. In the U.S. House, 14 of the PAC’s 17 candidates were victorious, and hundreds of down-ballot candidates backed by the group also won. Nine of those congressional races flipped seats from Republican to Democrat.
Among the newly elected lawmakers are an oncology nurse-practitioner, a mathematician, a microbiologist, a nuclear engineer, and an agricultural scientist. Naughton argued that having fact-based decision-makers at the governing table benefits the public. “We really benefit by having those data-driven, fact-based decisionmakers actually in a position at the governing table,” she said.
Richard Frank, director of the Brookings Institute’s Center on Health Policy, noted that health care workers and scientists have long served in Congress, but the concentration of them arriving in a single election is what stands out. He attributed the surge to the Trump administration’s hostility toward medical and technical expertise. “Science has been under attack,” Frank said, adding that it is not surprising some scientists responded by running for office.
Pandemic Legacy and Federal Defunding
Historian Kristoffer Shields, who leads Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, pointed to two driving forces behind the trend. One is a reaction to federal defunding of laboratories and scientific exploration. The other is a legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many health care workers began to see how politics shapes public health.
El-Sayed made public health central to his campaign. Earlier this year, he told WIRED that the cyclospora outbreak over the summer likely stemmed from the Trump administration’s choices, saying the government had dismantled the service that keeps lettuce safe. He was referring to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which directed mass layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration.
Georgia’s incoming representative Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist, said she was appalled to see infectious diseases spreading that had once been declared eradicated. Clark was first supported by 314 Action eight years ago when she ran for the Georgia House of Representatives. Naughton noted that Clark was part of the first class of scientists the group helped elect in 2018 and has now moved up to the federal level.
A Rebuke of Medical Misinformation
The success of so many candidates who champion scientific expertise also suggests a rejection of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement, which promotes medical misinformation, including anti-vaccine sentiment. Andrews has referred to Kennedy as her “archnemesis” and vowed to hold him accountable. Naughton said 314 Action launched its Guardians of Public Health initiative in 2025 to recruit health care experts to run for office, driven by the need to counter what she called a madman running the Health and Human Services cabinet.
Shields also credited the direct communication style of doctors and scientists as an asset that made them strong candidates. The organization’s push is not over: 314 Action will begin its next recruitment round later this month.
