Meet the Doctors and Scientists Who Won in the Midterms

The Democratic victors in the midterm elections included people who have spent their careers treating patients, studying viruses, and solving equations. Among the winners: a pediatrician in South Carolina, a microbiologist in Georgia, and a mathematician in Illinois—all bringing experience in health and science to government. Several are joining Congress. One is the next Governor of Ohio. 

Working in medicine, in particular, provides an opportunity to connect to voters, says Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, a political organization that recruits and supports Democratic candidates with scientific and medical backgrounds. “You go into the ER and your doctor doesn’t ask what party you are,” he says. Doctors, nurses, and others who work in health care may have heard patients describe their struggles and might have personally fought insurance companies to get treatment covered.

Still, having health credentials alone does not guarantee that someone will craft good policy, cautions Brian Castrucci, an epidemiologist and president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which works to strengthen public health through funding, training, and research. What matters is how they use their training. “Congress needs people who know how to weigh evidence, ask hard questions, and admit what we do not yet know,” he says.

Here’s what to know about some of the health and science professionals who won political seats in the midterms.

Dr. Annie Andrews

Andrews previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022. This time, she had a particular motivator: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she has called her “professional arch-nemesis.” She said his nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services convinced her to run for Senate.

Polyak points to her proposals to end prior authorization for routine and emergency care and prohibit private-equity firms from owning hospitals as examples of how doctors could bring their clinical experience into policymaking. Andrews’ campaign agenda also includes keeping rural hospitals open, lowering prescription prices, and strengthening vaccine access. “Everyone deserves the peace of mind that if they or their child get sick, they can see a doctor without going broke,” she writes.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, who leads the American Public Health Association (APHA), hasn’t worked directly with Andrews, but her approach to firearm safety has caught his attention. By emphasizing children’s safety, he says, she has found a way to discuss the issue with strong gun-rights supporters. He hopes that approach can help lawmakers have “an intelligent conversation” about protecting children and communities from firearm violence.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

As a medical student, El-Sayed—Michigan’s incoming U.S. senator—helped take care of a woman who had fallen and hit her head. He pushed to have her admitted to the hospital, where further examination revealed serious underlying illnesses, and arranged for her to enter a rehabilitation facility. Instead, she said she would go home with her daughter. Two weeks later, he found her sleeping on the subway, he recalled in a 2016 interview with Columbia Medicine magazine. The encounter helped convince him to withdraw his residency application and pursue public health. “I realized that I was a lot more interested in what happens before a patient gets to the door than what happens in the hospital,” he said at the time.

His health-care platform supports Medicare for All, reversing Medicaid cuts, and increasing support for local health departments. He also wants stronger protections against political interference in federal health agencies.

“He’s brilliant. He’s thoughtful,” says Benjamin, who knows El-Sayed through APHA meetings. “He’s respectful, and he follows the evidence wherever it goes.”

Jasmine Clark

Clark, who won an open seat for Congress in Georgia, is used to explaining things people don’t immediately understand. “Being a professor, the whole job is explaining difficult concepts to people who are hearing it for the first time,” says Clark, who teaches biology at Emory University, in an interview with TIME. Ideally, her students leave understanding the material well enough to explain it to someone else.

One early priority for her is scientific research funding. Clark says she wants to use the federal budget process to restore support for research and reverse what she describes as damage done by Elon Musk’s efforts to overhaul government spending. “That’s very top of mind for me,” she says.

She expects her teaching experience to help fellow lawmakers make sense of complicated science. “I look forward to bringing that to the caucus,” she says.

Elaine Luria

Her health-care plan includes restoring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, expanding prescription-drug negotiations, and simplifying insurance paperwork and prior authorization. She also wants to expand telehealth and help recruit doctors and nurses to rural communities.

Dr. Amy Acton

Ohioans got to know Acton during the early months of the COVID pandemic. As the state’s health director, she appeared alongside Republican Gov. Mike DeWine at near-daily briefings, explaining an unfolding crisis to people watching from home. Polyak remembers her as “Ohio’s caring doctor,” someone who told residents exactly what was happening. “She led with the facts and compassion,” he says.

Benjamin describes Acton as an extraordinary public-health practitioner with a skill that could prove particularly useful as governor: “She’s got the ability to talk to both sides of the political aisle,” he says. Polyak puts it this way: “She is kind. But not weak.”

Mitchell Berman

Berman, the incoming representative for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, is an emergency-room nurse who, according to his campaign website, still works night shifts. He’s spent 23 years in health care, including a decade caring for veterans at the VA. “I've watched patients ration medication they can't afford and families lose everything because they got sick,” he writes.

Berman grew up in rural Wisconsin, with a father who ran a roofing business and a mother who worked in a foundry. According to his campaign biography, he earned a nursing-assistant license by age 17 and worked three jobs while becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college.

He defeated Republican Rep. Bryan Steil in an upset in Wisconsin’s 1st District. His priorities include a public insurance option, lower prescription costs, and faster answers to prior-authorization requests. He also wants protections against violence toward health-care workers—and for bedside nurses to help determine staffing standards.

Christina Bohannan

Bohannan is the incoming representative for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. Her interest in health care is personal: Her father, a construction worker, developed emphysema and lost his insurance, she recounts in her campaign biography. With a pre-existing condition, he couldn’t obtain another policy. The family struggled to pay for groceries, bills, and the care needed to keep him alive. “We lost everything trying to save him,” she writes.

Bohannan grew up in a mobile home in a town of 700 people, became the first in her family to attend college, and studied environmental engineering. She worked on water quality before attending law school and beginning a 26-year teaching career at the University of Iowa.

Her goals include expanding Medicare’s ability to negotiate prescription prices and capping insulin at $35 a month for everyone. She also supports expanding clean energy and lowering families’ living costs.

Daniel Biss

His math background taught him to question the information put in front of him. “A lot of people come to policymakers with information that is maybe self-interested or reflects only one point of view,” he says in an interview with TIME. He says his training helps him figure out what else to ask before making a decision.

Dr. Adam Hamawy

In 2004, Hamawy helped save the life of a soldier whose helicopter had been shot down in Iraq: future Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Two decades later, Duckworth advocated for his evacuation when the surgeon became trapped in Gaza during a humanitarian medical mission. Now, they’ll both serve in Congress.

Hamawy, who won New Jersey’s 12th District, is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Army veteran, and medical-practice owner. According to his campaign biography, he began volunteering on humanitarian medical missions more than three decades ago, when he traveled to Bosnia as a medical student. He also describes treating victims and responders at Ground Zero during residency and later establishing a practice in Princeton.

His frustration with insurance barriers helped motivate him to run for office: surgeries delayed while awaiting approval, patients struggling to afford care, and rising premiums for his own employees. “For a doctor this isn’t abstract. We see it every single day,” he says. “People who can’t afford their medications, people who can’t get appointments, you know, the care being denied, we’re dealing with it. So I think having that experience in Washington gives a different perspective.”

His platform supports Medicare for All and argues for spending more federal resources on health care and communities. He plans to co-sponsor Medicare for All when he takes office. “The problem isn’t in our offices, the problem’s in Washington, and that’s where we need to go fix it,” he says. “That’s gonna be an easy signature for me.”

Dr. Richard Pan

Pan, who just won California’s 6th District in his U.S. House bid, says he ran in part because he wanted to question Robert F. Kennedy Jr. under oath. The pediatrician and former California state senator had already spent years fighting over vaccine policy. “He’s gone toe-to-toe with Kennedy multiple times already in California,” Polyak says.

Pan continued treating low-income children during his 12 years in the legislature, which ended in 2022. His more than 35 years in medicine, public health, and health policy have included training pediatricians, chairing legislative health committees, and overseeing health-budget decisions.

His campaign priorities include protecting federal health agencies, lowering prescription costs, and limiting insurers’ interference with physician-prescribed care. “I am running for office because medical decisions must be guided by scientific research, not ideology,” he said in a campaign statement.

Jacqui Irwin