Republicans who championed Medicaid cuts and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement had a rough Election Day. Democrats seized both chambers of Congress, including stunning wins in deep-red Texas, Kansas and South Carolina, after many candidates ran squarely on health care, as STAT’s elections team reports.
The results read as a rebuke of the GOP’s health agenda, from the Medicaid cuts in 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to RFK, Jr.’s MAHA upheaval. Even MAHA allies turned on the party. Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the MAHA-aligned Brownstone Institute, said the GOP’s “failure to take its mandate seriously — to give people back their lives and liberties — has led to what looks like yet another populist revolt in a different form.”
“This loss tonight was well-deserved,” he added.
MAHA’s flagship candidates fared poorly. Iowa gubernatorial hopeful Zach Lahn, who promised to ban Covid-19 vaccines and take on Big Agriculture, lost despite $1 million from the MAHA PAC and Kennedy’s enthusiastic backing. Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, a founder of the congressional MAHA Caucus, also lost his seat.
Meanwhile, candidates touting science credentials surged in what the group 314 Action dubbed a “STEM Wave.” Pediatrician Annie Andrews won South Carolina’s open Senate seat after campaigning in scrubs on vaccine access and keeping rural hospitals open. “My two decades as a physician have shown me in a thousand heartbreaking ways just how broken our health care system is,” her platform for reducing health care costs reads.
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She and Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, a physician-scientist and Medicare for All advocate poised to become Kennedy’s chief Senate antagonist, will be the first Democrats with medical degrees in the Senate since 1969. In Ohio, physician Amy Acton, who led the state’s Covid-19 response, defeated biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for governor.
Democrats now hold powerful new tools to investigate the administration. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) summed up the plan in one word on X: “Subpoenas.”
