{"id":10049,"date":"2026-11-05T21:16:31","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10049"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:16:31","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:16:31","slug":"the-blue-tsunami-swept-doctors-and-scientists-into-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10049","title":{"rendered":"The Blue Tsunami Swept Doctors and Scientists Into Office"},"content":{"rendered":"


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What do Michigan<\/span> senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed<\/a>, South Carolina senator-elect Annie Andrews, Ohio governor-elect Amy Acton, and North Carolina representative-elect Jamie Ager have in common, beyond their victories in this week\u2019s midterm elections<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Each is either a doctor or a scientist. And each had the backing of the political action committee 314 Action Fund, which focuses on electing pro-science voices to public office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really benefit by having those data-driven, fact-based decisionmakers actually in a position at the governing table,\u201d says Shaughnessy Naughton, a chemist and former congressional candidate who founded 314 Action after losing her race in 2016. This cycle, the PAC spent above $30 million donating to and supporting various campaigns, including fundraising for specific races. It raised $3.6 million for pediatrician Andrews in the fight over what had been Lindsay Graham\u2019s Senate seat in South Carolina, for example, and another $3 million for physician Acton\u2019s campaign in the hotly contested Ohio governor race, according to Naughton.<\/p>\n

The organization\u2019s success rate topped 80 percent this cycle for congressional candidates, with 14 of 17 of its candidates in the US House of Representatives winning their races and hundreds of successful down-ballot candidates. Nine of these races flipped seats from Republican to Democrat. Victorious congressional candidates who flipped their districts this year include an oncology nurse-practitioner, a mathematician, a microbiologist, a nuclear engineer, and an agricultural scientist. \u201cIt did turn out to be a health care election,\u201d Naughton says.<\/p>\n

Richard Frank, the director of the Brookings Institute\u2019s Center on Health Policy, notes that health care workers and scientists have always been part of the makeup of Congress, but not to this degree. \u201cWhat is unusual,\u201d he says, \u201cis just how many came in one wave.\u201d He sees the spike in this type of candidate as a direct result of the hostility toward medical and technical expertise from the Trump administration. \u201cScience has been under attack,\u201d Frank says. \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising that scientists have recognized that, and some of them went out and ran for Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise of the science candidate has several causes, according to historian Kristoffer Shields, who runs Rutgers University\u2019s Eagleton Institute of Politics. \u201cSome of it certainly is a reaction to what’s been happening at the federal level, the defunding of a lot of laboratories and scientific exploration,\u201d he says. But he also sees this as a legacy of the pandemic, when many health care workers started thinking about how politics impacts public health.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, El-Sayed emphasized to WIRED<\/a> that his candidacy was focused on public health, noting that the cyclospora outbreak that sickened Americans over the summer likely stemmed from the Trump administration\u2019s choices. \u201cWe DOGE\u2019d our whole service that keeps the lettuce safe,\u201d he said at the time, referencing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> directing mass layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, South Carolina senator-elect Annie Andrews, Ohio governor-elect Amy Acton, and North Carolina representative-elect Jamie Ager have in common, beyond their victories in this week\u2019s midterm elections? Each is either a doctor or a scientist. And each had the backing of the political action committee 314 Action Fund, which focuses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[920,129,146,169,454],"class_list":["post-10049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-democrats","tag-elections","tag-public-health","tag-science","tag-voting"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Blue Tsunami Swept Doctors and Scientists Into Office - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"More than 80 percent of congressional candidates backed by the pro-science PAC 314 Action won, including Michigan senator-elect and epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10049\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Blue Tsunami Swept Doctors and Scientists Into Office - 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