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.
Here’s what to know about some of the health and science professionals who won political seats in the midterms.
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.
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
El-Sayed went on to lead health departments in Detroit and Wayne County. Now, after defeating Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open Senate seat, he’s headed to Washington as the nation’s first Muslim senator.
“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.”
The microbiologist earned her doctorate at Emory in 2013 studying retroviral particles with live-cell imaging. She directed Atlanta’s March for Science in 2017 and won a seat in the Georgia legislature a year later. After a decade teaching at Emory’s nursing school, she joined its biology department in 2024..
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
Politics came next. Luria served two terms in Congress and helped investigate the Jan. 6 attack before losing her seat to Republican Jen Kiggans in 2022. This year, she won back Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District seat.
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 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.
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.
Her congressional breakthrough took persistence: She defeated Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks on her third attempt, after losing the 2024 race by just 799 votes.
Daniel Biss
Biss, who will succeed longtime Rep. Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’ 9th District, has a résumé that includes a doctorate in mathematics from MIT, a stint on the University of Chicago faculty, and more than a decade in elected office. He served in the Illinois House and Senate before becoming Evanston’s mayor in 2021.
As mayor, Biss helped establish a program that sends social workers and other responders to certain low-risk calls, including mental-health needs, according to his campaign. His record also includes work on reducing building emissions, supporting abortion rights, and strengthening technology privacy.
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.
His platform supports Medicare for All and argues for spending more federal resources on health care and communities. “What I see every day are hospitals that can't staff emergency rooms and doctors blocked by insurance companies and bureaucracy,” he writes on his campaign website.
Dr. Richard Pan
In 2015, Pan helped pass a California law eliminating personal-belief exemptions from vaccination requirements for schoolchildren. Four years later, he pushed to tighten oversight of medical exemptions. That triggered backlash: Threats intensified in 2019, and he needed a restraining order and a personal security detail. He was also physically assaulted.
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
Her record includes a significant investment in mental-health care: She authored the behavioral-health bond legislation included in California’s Proposition 1, approved by voters in 2024. The measure authorized approximately $6.4 billion in bonds for treatment facilities and housing connected to behavioral-health needs. She has also worked to remove barriers to mental-health services for military members.
Irwin told KCLU that her congressional priorities include holding the Trump Administration accountable and addressing living costs. Her approach, she says, is simple: “My degree is in systems engineering. My approach to issues is very logical, and I always try to solve problems.”
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