Advocates and supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement suffered crushing midterm defeats.
The health secretary’s agenda could be severely hindered over the next two years as Democrats swept control of the House and Senate, as well as several key gubernatorial races, defeating several Kennedy allies.
Among them was Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, chair of the MAHA Caucus in Congress, who became the first Republican to lose a Kansas Senate race in nearly a century on Tuesday after being defeated by Adam Hamilton. The race was one of several that Democrats flipped to seize control of the upper chamber.
Marshall was one of Kennedy’s closest allies in Congress and established the MAHA Caucus in December 2024, even before Kennedy was confirmed as health secretary, to support his push to combat chronic disease and help Americans improve their diets.
Tuesday was a particularly brutal night for MAHA Republicans in Iowa, where several Kennedy-backed candidates were swept up in the seismic blue wave.
Republican Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, who shared Kennedy’s concerns about pesticides in farming, lost to Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand on Tuesday. At a campaign rally last week, Kennedy described Lahn’s race as “the most important election going on in this country.”
Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, both of whom Kennedy campaigned for, also lost their re-election bids as Democrats flipped dozens of House seats.
Another MAHA advocate and Kennedy pick, Joe Mitchell, lost his Iowa House race to Democratic opponent Lindsay James. The seat is being vacated by Ashley Hinson, who was among several Republican Senate candidates to lose their races in red states on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Kennedy’s own political future is in the balance following the midterm blue wave. In one of the biggest shocks of the night, Democrat Dr. Annie Andrews defeated Republican Sen. Darline Graham, whom Donald Trump had parachuted into the seat following the death of her brother, veteran senator Lindsey Graham, in July.
Andrews, a pediatrician, has been a vocal critic of Kennedy and made impeaching the vaccine skeptic one of her campaign pledges.
“The day that RFK Jr. was nominated to lead HHS was the day that I really seriously started considering running for this seat,” Andrews told The New Republic in July.
“RFK Jr. has been my professional archnemesis for decades, and there are thousands of pediatricians across the country who would say the same thing.”
