January 10, 2026
By Anvee Bhutani and Sabrina Siddiqui
WASHINGTON—Dr. Richard Pan has been doused with blood over health policy.
The pediatrician and former California state senator says that was the price of authoring some of the country’s strictest vaccine laws nearly a decade ago. The legislation turned him into a target for antivaccine activists and put him at odds with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then one of the most vocal skeptics of vaccines. In 2019, a protester hurled blood from the visitors gallery onto the floor of the California state legislature, targeting Pan and some of his colleagues.
Now Pan is preparing for a new fight in Washington. Kennedy’s appointment to lead the nation’s top health agencies persuaded him to run for Congress in California’s recently redrawn sixth district in the Sacramento area. He says he wants to “beat RFK’s lies in Washington the way I beat them in California.”
Pan is part of what Democratic groups see as a wave of Democrat physicians running for Congress, with many targeting competitive House seats this fall. The surge is driven in part by concerns about healthcare costs and coverage, as well as alarm at the appointment of Kennedy. The health secretary has unsettled many in medicine by elevating vaccine skeptics, changing immunization guidelines and overriding career scientists within the federal government.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said Kennedy’s focus on transparency, informed consent and patient choice was aimed at restoring public trust in public health institutions after decades of worsening health outcomes.
In New Jersey, critical-care physician Dr. Tina Shah said the combination of Kennedy’s appointment and rising medical costs pushed her to run for Congress and try to flip a competitive seat currently held by GOP Rep. Tom Kean. She says she is seeing more patients skip procedures or drain savings to pay medical bills.
“Trump and RFK have zero years of medical education. I have 14,” Shah said. “What they’re doing is outrageous.”
RFK has been a lightning rod in the Trump administration. Recent polls have shown that a majority of voters disapprove of Kennedy’s job performance and lack confidence in him providing trustworthy medical information. Defenders say Kennedy draws unique support from voters who don’t strongly align with either Republicans or Democrats, and that his endorsement helped propel Trump back to the White House.
Democrats are fielding more physician candidates than Republicans in the current cycle, even as Republicans retain an edge among sitting doctor-lawmakers. According to tracking by political recruitment groups and campaign filings, at least nine Democratic physicians have announced House or Senate runs for 2026. On the Republican side, only one physician—Arizona’s Zuhdi Jasser—has formally launched a House campaign. GOP doctors outnumber Democratic doctors 14 to six in the current Congress.
Republicans hold a narrow 218-213 majority in the House. Some congressional Republicans have grown concerned with Kennedy’s actions and privately urged the White House to rein in efforts to overhaul childhood vaccine guidelines, citing the potential pushback from suburban voters in swing districts. GOP lawmakers also are split on whether to extend enhanced ACA subsidies, which expired on Jan. 1.
An influx of Democratic doctors would mark a sharp shift for a profession that has traditionally skewed Republican—particularly specialists and private-practice doctors. There are only six Democratic physicians in the House and none in the Senate, compared with 10 Republican doctors in the House and four in the Senate.
Political-donation data suggest the profession’s center of gravity has been moving left for years. Data from Stanford University’s Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections shows that physicians who made political contributions skewed Republican in 2000 but overwhelmingly Democratic by 2020.
314 Action, a pro-science political group backing the Democratic doctor candidates, say healthcare has become its top recruitment priority since Kennedy’s appointment and they have received surging interest.
“We hadn’t targeted doctors before,” said Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, which recruits and supports Democratic candidates with science backgrounds. “But this is a perfect storm.”
Founded a decade ago, 314 Action spent over $13 million in the 2024 election cycle and has already committed nearly $4 million to the 2026 midterms, working with over a dozen Democratic House candidates, around half of whom are doctors.
With Medicaid funding cut in Trump’s budget law last year and enhanced ACA subsidies not being extended, Democrats now view medical costs as a central issue in the midterms, amid broader concerns about the cost of living. Doctors say they see the trade-offs patients are forced to make every day.
Dr. Thomas Fisher traces his decision to run for Congress to a shift in an overcrowded emergency room on Chicago’s South Side shortly after lawmakers passed the funding cuts. He said Kennedy’s influence over health policy intensified his sense of urgency.
“The fact that we’re unwinding settled science because of the whims of one person is extremely dangerous,” said Fisher, who is running in a crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Danny Davis (D., Ill.) to represent the state’s seventh congressional district.
In Texas, Dr. Ada Cuellar, running for Congress in the state’s 15th district, said she routinely sees patients delay or decline care because of cost. Even patients with insurance, she said, often avoid imaging or specialty referrals out of fear of medical debt. “It’s been extremely upsetting,” she said.
In California’s Central Valley, state lawmaker and family physician Dr. Jasmeet Bains said that in her district—one of the poorest in the state—roughly two-thirds of residents are enrolled in Medicaid.
Many could lose coverage under Trump’s new tax law, which cuts over $1 trillion in healthcare spending over the next decade and introduces work requirements for Medicaid.
“I used to transfer people from private insurance to Medicaid,” she said. “But now I’m transferring people from Medicaid to nothing.” It has pushed her to run for a House seat in California’s 22nd district.
Democrats’ efforts aren’t limited to the House. In South Carolina, pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews, who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) in 2022, said she decided to run for Senate on the day Kennedy was nominated, embarking on an uphill battle to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) in the deep-red state.
“As a pediatrician, he’s been my archnemesis,” she said of Kennedy. “The damage he’s already done…will take decades to undo.”