Last week, doctors and scientists across the country persuaded Americans to vote them into office. Now comes the hard part: Convincing those who didn’t trust them to believe in their mission.
Doctors and public health officials ran pro-vaccine, pro-science campaigns and won over voters even in traditionally conservative areas. Candidates endorsed by the organization 314 Action, which works to elect Democratic doctors and scientists, flipped 10 congressional seats in last week’s election.
“What we saw in the results is that when these scientists really leaned into their scientific and medical backgrounds, that only provided their potential constituents with more trust,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, the founder of 314 Action. “They are looked at as truth tellers and that really is what people want.”
But the midterm results also clearly demonstrate that Americans remain deeply divided on core scientific issues, with some communities remaining distrustful of the cornerstones of public health policy.
South Carolina elected a pediatrician, Annie Andrews, as the first Democrat to represent the state in the Senate since 2005, but it also voted for 18 officials who publicly pledged…