https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/26/rfk-jr-food-vaccine-policies-00748061

By Cheyenne Haslett and Erin Doherty01/27/2026 05:45 AM EST

Republicans have embraced HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s healthy food crusade, hoping it will boost their prospects in the midterms.

Some Democrats fear it might work.

The health secretary was in Pennsylvania last week, touting a new campaign to “take back” Americans’ health. It was the first of what is expected to be many stops ahead of the midterms where the secretary, a former presidential candidate with a constituency all his own, will tout the administration’s efforts to keep Americans, especially children, healthy.

It comes amid an emerging consensus: The White House, GOP state lawmakers and Republican pollsters believe that Kennedy’s focus on reforming America’s food has broad bipartisan appeal that can help the party hold its razor-thin majorities in Congress.

Pennsylvania State Rep. David Rowe, a Republican running for re-election this fall, says he regularly gets kudos from registered Democrats on a package of MAHA bills he sponsored to remove ultra processed food from schools and limit pesticide use in local farming.

“They recognize that, hey, they might not agree with the administration or me on this issue or that issue, but they understand that having better food for them and their kids, that’s that’s not a partisan, controversial issue,” Rowe told POLITICO after a rally with Kennedy and nearly 30 other GOP lawmakers.

Those are the kinds of anecdotes and interactions that have Republicans optimistic that Kennedy can be a tailwind in their fight on state and federal ballots this fall.

And there is polling to back up the anecdotes. Kennedy’s efforts to remove synthetic dyes from food, for example, have support from at least eight in 10 parents, a recent poll from nonpartisan health research organization KFF and the Washington Post found.

Some Democrats insist that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine bent, the GOP’s Medicaid cuts and Republican inability to extend enhanced Obamacare premiums will turn off more voters than those enticed by promises of healthier diets.

“I 100 percent agree with the attention that Secretary Kennedy is putting on healthy food choices, but that’s about it,” said Pennsylvania State Rep. Bridget Kosierowski, a nurse and Democrat who watched Kennedy’s speech. “We don’t want kids to have measles or mumps or Rubella or whooping cough, or certainly hepatitis. … He’s complicating, you know, our belief in science, which is really dangerous.”

Democratic strategists like Erik Polyak, executive director of 3.14 Action, which helps elect Democratic doctors to Congress, argue that Kennedy’s focus on food won’t juice enough voter turnout to overcome the unpopularity of both Kennedy himself and his other policy decisions.

“People want less food dyes, but at the end of the day, does it really matter when he’s doing these terrible things with vaccines and literally putting our children at risk?” Polyak said. “School lunches don’t matter when your kids die.”

Still, others believe the party should be careful not to be too dismissive of Kennedy’s appeal, which helped Republicans in 2024.

“Democrats could easily have said we should have a blue ribbon commission to figure out why incidences of various childhood ailments are rising and we welcome anyone who wants to try and make our families healthier,” said Andrew Yang, a short-lived 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who gained popularity for promoting ideas outside of the mainstream and now identifies as an Independent.

“Instead, there was a total rejection of not just RFK himself, but of many of the people that followed him,” he said. “If your goal is to win, you should be trying to build as big a tent as possible.”

The White House, to that end, touts Kennedy’s focus on healthy food and lifestyle as key to reaching voters beyond Trump’s base.

“It’s not a red meat issue. It’s a cross-cutting issue that most people across ages, across race, you know, political affiliation, largely agree with and support,” said a White House official, granted anonymity to describe how the White House thinks about Kennedy’s role in the midterms.

But not all of the MAHA movement is a political boon. The anti-vaccine rhetoric that Kosierowski and Polyak identified carries political risk, the White House official acknowledged. Polling shows parents remain overwhelmingly supportive of long-standing childhood vaccines.

“What we’re doing on vaccines, it’s not like a mistake, so to speak, but yeah, I think the food stuff is just more salient, and something that the average person is more read into,” the official said.

Data from Trump’s own campaign pollsters also supports that strategy. In a November survey of swing districts voters, Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward found that more than nine in 10 voters think the government should require “labeling of harmful ingredients and chemicals in ultra-processed foods.”

But removing established childhood vaccine recommendations for diseases like whooping cough, measles and hepatitis was popular with just one in five voters, and only a third of self-described MAHA voters, Fabrizio and Ward wrote in a memo summarizing their results.

“The MAHA agenda is widely popular across party lines EXCEPT for vaccine skepticism, including among MAHA voters,” Fabrizio and Ward wrote.

Kennedy, in what could be a headache for the White House, doesn’t concede any strategy change. Allowing parents to make their own choices on childhood vaccinations is “just an important issue from a public health point of view,” Kennedy told POLITICO on Wednesday. “Whether it’s a good political issue, I don’t know.”

But Kennedy also didn’t mention vaccines in his stump-style speech in Pennsylvania, instead sticking to a script that highlighted his efforts to eliminate food dyes and implement new dietary guidelines that promote whole foods.

Navigator Research, a Democratic messaging and polling firm, was more blunt about the downside risk of Kennedy’s vaccine rhetoric. “Anti-vaccine policies and the anti-vaccine movement are unpopular,” read a guide obtained by POLITICO.

But the group also cautioned that Democrats “should not shy away from reclaiming MAHA-adjacent, popular health policies” like healthier school lunches, less artificial dyes in food, health insurance coverage for preventative care and going after corporate polluters.

“Democrats remain more trusted on issues of health care, wellness, and public health and should capitalize on those advantages,” Navigator Research wrote.

“What we’ve figured out is we should focus on the parts of MAHA that are not as popular,” said Andy Barr, a Democratic strategist working on midterm races around the country. “What we have not done a good job of is figuring out how we can co-opt some of what’s popular about that, or, like, surf on some of what’s popular about that.”

Barr doesn’t see that changing any time soon.

Campaigns will lean on “proven” strategies that pin the Trump administration as “crazy unpopular” rather than embrace aspects of MAHA that voters like.

“It is ceding a popular bipartisan issue,” Barr said. “I didn’t say it was a good idea. I just said that’s probably what’s going to happen.”

IPAK-EDU is grateful to Meryl’s CHAOS letter (Critical Health Analysis and OpinionS) as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More