After White House Spurns MAHA, Medical Establishment Wins Big

Doctor Democrats who embrace the medical establishment notched major wins in high-profile races in Ohio, South Carolina and Michigan on Tuesday.

The results represent a major victory for proponents of the scientific institutions that became a political lightning rod during the COVID-19 pandemic — and a drastic pivot from their apparent rebuke two years ago.

South Carolina Senator-elect Annie Andrews, Ohio Governor-elect Amy Acton and Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed all centered their experience in healthcare as the core of their political identities.

All were supported by 314 Action, a PAC and dark money group that supports Democratic candidates with science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) backgrounds on a “pro-science” agenda. This includes pro-abortion, pro-gun control, and pro-climate action policies, as well as those aligned with public health orthodoxy.

El-Sayed has called for Medicare for All, while Acton and Andrews have instead called for increasing health subsidies and lowering drug costs.

But central to their health care message was lambasting Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a dangerous heretic of established medical science.

The major wins for scientific establishment come amid disillusionment among many erstwhile supporters of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” brand after the White House abandoned the issue of COVID vaccine safety, walked back some of its promises on pesticides like glyphosate, and diluted some of its vows on nutrition.

Acton served as outgoing Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s COVID czar in 2020 — earning the moniker “Ohio’s Anthony Fauci” — and has lambasted Kennedy for his critique of the medical establishment. She wrote that he was “trying to convince parents to pin the blame on doctors for childhood diseases and diagnoses” in a June 2025 op-ed.

“During the COVID pandemic, I was on the front lines in Ohio, working to save lives and reopen responsibly and quickly as the director of the Ohio Department of Health,” Acton wrote. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that if allowed to continue as is, he will kill Americans.”