Doctors and Scientists Ride the Blue Wave Into Congress, Fueled by a $30M PAC

The midterms delivered a very specific kind of freshman class: doctors, nurses, mathematicians and microbiologists. Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, South Carolina senator-elect Annie Andrews, Ohio governor-elect Amy Acton and North Carolina representative-elect Jamie Ager all share a science or medical background — and all had the political action committee 314 Action Fund in their corner. The PAC, founded by chemist and former congressional candidate Shaughnessy Naughton after her 2016 loss, put more than $30 million behind campaigns this cycle, according to Naughton.

The scoreboard is lopsided. 314 Action says its congressional candidates cleared an 80 percent success rate, with 14 of its 17 US House candidates winning and hundreds more down-ballot victories. Nine of those races flipped from red to blue. The flip winners include an oncology nurse-practitioner, a mathematician, a microbiologist, a nuclear engineer and an agricultural scientist. Naughton raised $3.6 million for pediatrician Andrews in the fight for what had been Lindsey Graham's South Carolina Senate seat, and $3 million for physician Acton's Ohio governor run.

Why now? Richard Frank, who directs the Brookings Institution's Center on Health Policy, told WIRED that health workers and scientists have always had a presence in Congress — just never this many at once. He called the size of the single wave unusual and tied it to the Trump administration's hostility toward medical and technical expertise. Historian Kristoffer Shields of Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics points to federal defunding of laboratories and scientific research, plus the pandemic's long shadow over how health care workers view politics and public health.

El-Sayed framed his run around public health from the start, telling WIRED earlier this year that the summer's cyclospora outbreak likely traced back to the administration's choices. He described the Food and Drug Administration's mass layoffs — directed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — as gutting the service that keeps lettuce safe. Incoming Georgia representative Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist, told The Guardian she was appalled to see once-eradicated infectious diseases spreading again. Clark was in 314 Action's first class of scientist candidates back in 2018.

The results land as a pointed answer to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his MAHA movement, which pushes medical misinformation including anti-vaccine sentiment. Andrews has called RFK Jr. her archnemesis and pledged to hold him accountable. 314 Action doesn't hide its aim of electing Democratic health and science experts, and in 2025 it launched a Guardians of Public Health initiative to recruit more of them — Naughton's pitch being that a madman is running the Health and Human Services cabinet.

One wrinkle from the past: in 2024, 314 Action faced scrutiny over earlier funding from groups tied to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. The PAC no longer takes that money and backed candidates like El-Sayed, who was outspoken against the Israeli government. Unlike the American Medical Association's PAC, 314 Action zeroes in on Democratic health and science experts. The recruitment machine isn't idling either — the next round starts later this month.