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The White House has put Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the road ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Kennedy has been showing up in key battleground House districts in recent weeks, touting his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda to improve the nation’s food and promoting similar administration initiatives.
It’s a sign that far from being sidelined, the White House views Kennedy as an important asset in trying to help Republicans keep control of government.
“When President Trump pledged to Make America Healthy Again, he launched a nationwide movement and call to action for parents, educators, researchers, food companies, and local lawmakers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told The Hill in a statement.
“Secretary Kennedy has already delivered major progress on the MAHA agenda, from cracking down on artificial ingredients to overhauling the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and he will continue to tout these historic victories by HHS and the Trump administration for the American people,” he added.
Kennedy has crisscrossed the country this year, traveling between swing districts in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado and Michigan, to name a few.
The appearances are largely part of Kennedy’s “Take Back Your Health” tour, where he has encouraged outdoor recreation, sang the praises of drinking whole milk, touted the administration’s initiatives toward keeping infant formula safe and spoken about ongoing efforts toward tackling addiction.
The stops are not officially campaign visits, but the visits to localities like Clear Creek, Wis., Thornton, Colo., and Charlotte, Mich., are strategic.
The lawmakers representing those areas — Reps. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) and Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) — helm some of the most competitive House districts this cycle.
“Bobby’s good on the campaign trail. He connects sincerely with his audience most of the time, and I think that some people in the White House who were against some of his policy agenda recognize that he’s a better surrogate in some of these districts than some of their other people that the White House could deploy,” said David Murphy, a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
Kennedy also recently made a stop at a childcare facility in Toledo, Ohio, part of the district represented by vulnerable Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, to tout Head Start grants.
Several news outlets reported that Kennedy also went as far as to personally call on a libertarian candidate in Iowa, who has since been disqualified, to drop his candidacy.
In a midterm environment where Democrats are looking to make 2026 a referendum on Trump and flip the House, every seat counts.
GOP strategists and people within the MAHA movement said the White House is looking for an edge in the campaign. So, they’re turning to MAHA and Kennedy.
“The White House is worried about the midterms, and they look around at the people who they have on the team, and Kennedy still is the most popular one,” said Jeff Hutt, the former national field director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
While it is common for an administration to send Cabinet members out as surrogates, Kennedy— as the head of MAHA and a former Democrat with one of the most recognizable names in politics — brings something extra to the table.
“The fact that it’s a Kennedy married to a Hollywood star, and who wrestles snakes and does chin-ups as hobbies, just makes him a more appealing draw,” said Mark Weaver, an Ohio-based GOP strategist.
“When you look at the Trump cabinet, having Bobby Kennedy go out and campaign is a net plus for the Republicans. Nobody stands out at the draw the way Bobby Kennedy does,” Weaver said.
The MAHA movement, which came about from the political alliance between Kennedy and President Trump, is broadly focused on issues like chronic disease and childhood illness. It has elevated issues such as vaccine safety, corporate interests in federal agencies and the presence of chemical additives and pesticides in the food supply.
MAHA helped give Trump an important ally in Kennedy, a longtime Democrat before he endorsed Trump and joined his administration. And Kennedy gave Trump and Republicans access to a new group of voters, which could be key to helping lift the party in a year where Trump’s ratings are underwater.
Now, Trump is looking to make sure those voters go to the polls again.
“The GOP rented MAHA in ‘24 ,and I think a lot of people in the Republican Party thought, ‘Okay, these are our people now, this is like a permanent part of our coalition,’ and that’s not how coalitions work,” said Brent Buchanan, founder and CEO of the right-of-center polling firm Cygnal.
Support for the MAHA movement is polarized, polls have shown, with Republicans more likely than Democrats and independents to say they identify as supporters.
But many of MAHA’s ideas are broadly popular, even if the label is partisan.
A KFF Health Tracking Poll released last month showed that 41 percent of adult respondents support the MAHA movement. Among those supporting MAHA, 65 percent identified as Republican or Republican-leaning independents, according to the poll.
Twenty-one percent identified as Democrat or Democratic-leaning, while 10 percent were unaffiliated.
Much of the opposition to Kennedy centers around his vaccine skepticism, including efforts to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule to reduce the number of shots children receive.
Ahead of the November elections, the White House has worked to keep his vaccine efforts behind the scenes and instead let him talk about topics like fitness, ultra-processed foods, artificial sweeteners and obesity.
That gives vulnerable Republicans a set of popular health issues to talk about, without needing to veer into the more controversial vaccine issues.
“MAHA is still, I think, the one thing that [the administration] can point to” with positive accomplishments, Hutt said. “You’ve noticed [Kennedy] is not talking about vaccines … he’s really talking about food, healthy nutrition. So I really think it’s a political strategy to roll out the best person they have right now to grab what they hope are independents or ‘sometimes Republicans’ who don’t come out and vote in midterms.”
The race for the House has been particularly fierce this cycle as Democrats view it as their best opportunity at flipping one of the chambers in Congress in November.
A divided Congress would likely thwart any ability for Republicans to pass more of their priorities before the end of Trump’s term — upping the stakes for both parties.
If Democrats can make Kennedy’s vaccine changes the centerpiece of their attacks, he could be a liability for GOP candidates. And in backing Trump, Kennedy has alienated some of the most ardent MAHA supporters who want limits on pesticides and did not support Trump’s war in Iran.
“I would argue that the Democrats are the party that is working toward accountability of these institutions, but they have allowed themselves to be characterized as the party of elites,” said Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I think that the ideas embedded within MAHA are more popular than RFK Jr. is,” she added.
Rachel Frazin contributed.
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