President Donald Trump is betting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA followers will matter more to Republicans in next year’s elections than people turned off by Kennedy’s vaccine policy moves.
But not every Republican lawmaker who has to face the voters is so sure.
In interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans on Capitol Hill, all up for reelection, some dithered over whether Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who’s using his position to revisit the childhood schedule, is a political asset. “We’ve got to sort that out,” said Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, referencing a recent survey on the issue by a pollster who’s worked with Trump. “Polling shows Americans believe in vaccines.”
Trump’s spokesperson, Kush Desai, has said the president has “full confidence” in Kennedy, while Kennedy’s, Andrew Nixon, has described the two as “united” behind Kennedy’s agenda. But some prominent Republican lawmakers, when asked about Kennedy and whether his alliance with Trump is politically helpful, aren’t defending him.
“That’s really not my priority,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is staring down a tough primary challenge from Ken Paxton, the state attorney general.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is Democrats’ biggest midterm target, said she didn’t think of Kennedy and what he’s doing “from a political perspective.” Collins has previously said she was “alarmed” by Kennedy’s decision to push out the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month. She said she supported Cassidy’s decision to call the fired official, Susan Monarez, to testify on Wednesday before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that Cassidy chairs.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who ran the GOP’s Senate campaign arm in the last cycle, would not comment on whether Kennedy would help or hurt. “Going into the midterms probably the biggest issue is going to come back to the economy, inflation, the price of gas,” he said.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), whom Trump has endorsed in his bid for a third term, said it’s up to the president to decide if Kennedy will be an asset for the party in the midterms.
Retaining the House and Senate in next year’s elections would enable Trump to pursue more legislation of the magnitude of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut taxes and Medicaid spending after Trump signed it in July. Control of the Senate speeds the appointment of judges. Losing Congress would take another major bill off the table and give Democrats platforms to condemn and investigate Trump.
At Kennedy’s confirmation hearing earlier this year, Cassidy acknowledged the passion of the MAHA moms and others in Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement. “I’ve learned you got a tremendous following. My phone blows up with people who really follow you,” he told Kennedy.
Cassidy eventually voted for Kennedy’s confirmation on the condition that he retain existing vaccine policies. But after Kennedy limited access to Covid shots, stacked an advisory panel with people Cassidy says “hate vaccines” and fired Monarez, Cassidy is having second thoughts.
His decision to call Monarez to testify on Wednesday is a risky move for a lawmaker who could need Trump’s support in heading off a primary challenge from his right next year. Monarez is expected to say she refused Kennedy’s demand that she rubber stamp recommendations from the advisory panel Kennedy remade. Part of the panel’s job is to recommend changes to the childhood vaccine schedule.
At 42 percent, Americans view Kennedy more favorably than any other member of Trump’s Cabinet, and even Trump himself, according to a recent Gallup survey. A conservative group’s poll earlier this year found high levels of support for other Kennedy priorities, such as making school lunches healthier and banning certain chemicals in food.
White House aides said they see Kennedy’s vaccine policy moves as angering some and pleasing others, effectively negating any political impact, but they think Kennedy’s broader message about healthy living is resonating broadly.
Kennedy has Republican allies on Capitol Hill, led by the members of the MAHA Caucus that formed in December to support him: Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Rick Scott of Florida, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
But Cassidy wasn’t the only GOP lawmaker spooked by a new survey from a polling firm that’s worked for Trump, Fabrizio Ward, that found widespread support for childhood vaccines. The second-ranking Republican in the Senate, Wyoming’s John Barrasso, raised the poll results with Kennedy at a Finance Committee hearing two weeks ago and said he was “deeply concerned” about Kennedy’s vaccine policies. Barrasso refused to talk about Kennedy when asked about him a week later.
While Kennedy’s most notable policy change on vaccines so far are new limits on who the Covid shots are licensed for, he seems to be moving toward a broader overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule. He’s said, for instance, that he doesn’t think the Hepatitis B vaccine should be given to all newborns and it’s on the agenda of his hand-picked vaccine advisory panel later this week.
Even Trump seems worried about Kennedy’s desire to permit parents to refuse vaccines for their children and still send them to school. Asked about Florida officials’ decision to move in that direction, Trump told a reporter on Sept. 5 that some vaccines are “amazing” and “you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”
At the same time, Trump has continued to back Kennedy. He agreed to fire Monarez after Kennedy tried to push her out and earlier this month told a group of technology CEOs with whom he was dining: “I like the fact that he’s different.”
Most of Kennedy’s MAHA goals are widely popular, said Joel White, a former Republican health care aide at the Ways and Means Committee who now runs Horizon Government Affairs, a lobbying firm.
“Food, screentime, environment — most voters respond more positively on those issues,” White said. “Vaccines are the toughest part of the MAHA agenda.”
White added that several Republican members he spoke with were concerned about how Kennedy might affect their midterm chances.
There’s been a vibe shift, White said, after Kennedy sparred with his skeptics on the Finance Committee. More Republicans, including Barrasso, came after the secretary, and Democrats have since sought to amplify their critique. Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent aligned with the Democrats, have held pro-vaccine events in recent days.
“Defending science and doctors is enormously important,” Sanders said when asked about the midterm opportunity for Democrats. “The impact politically, I don’t know.”
So far, concerns about Kennedy’s vaccine policies don’t seem to have penetrated too deeply: 60 percent of parents surveyed this summer by KFF, the health policy think tank, and The Washington Post have heard “little to nothing” about Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes.
Some of the Republicans POLITICO spoke with did back Kennedy. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a dentist who’s a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Health Subcommittee, said he thought “Kennedy’s stance on health freedom, including vaccine policies, are an asset for Republicans.”
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he thought Kennedy was right to “question science constantly” and that he “absolutely” agreed that Kennedy was an asset to the party.
But even one of Kennedy’s most ardent supporters in Congress, Alabama’s Tuberville, recently acknowledged that he saw the criticism Kennedy received at the Finance Committee as a sign that GOP colleagues were worried more about their political futures than what he sees as reforming a broken health care system.
Kennedy, he said, was the victim of a “coordinated, deep-state hit job” by entrenched interests threatened by his policies.
Tuberville lamented that “several of my Republican colleagues joined in on this fiasco,” adding that he thought that was self-interested rather than public-spirited: “Something I’ve learned is when you challenge the status quo, you find out real quick who’s willing to stand with you and who’s just concerned with getting reelected.”
Megan Messerly contributed to this story.
