Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement isn’t doing much to help Republicans maintain control of Congress.
MAHA Action and MAHA Institute, the movement’s political organizations spreading Kennedy’s message on healthy food and vaccine safety, have largely stayed out of the races that will determine the makeup of Congress. Tony Lyons, the publisher of Kennedy’s books who’s taken a lead role in running the groups, has struggled to turn Kennedy’s appeal into the juggernaut Republicans had hoped would enable them to hold onto their House and Senate majorities.
“The majority of those candidates that got that endorsement were going to win anyway,” said John McCarthy, founder of McCarthy Strategic Solutions, a Republican political strategy firm in Kentucky, about elections where MAHA Institute got involved in his state.
MAHA groups have endorsed just one Republican, freshman Michigan Rep. Tom Barrett, in a battleground House district so far, ignoring the rest of the competitive races that will determine control of the chamber.
In the Senate, where Republicans need to defend seats in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, MAHA hasn’t backed anyone, much less provided money or grassroots support.
Aides to President Donald Trump have credited Kennedy with helping Trump win the popular vote in 2024 and were banking on him helping GOP candidates this year. Lyons has played up the savior role. In February, he declared MAHA a “once in a generation political gift to the GOP” in a memo to the Republican National Committee and the party’s Senate and House campaign arms. His MAHA PAC has committed $100 million to support Republicans in this year’s election, although campaign records show it has less than $400,000 in available cash.
Of the 40 candidates MAHA groups have endorsed, only four are running for Congress, Barrett, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), Michael Alfonso, and Brandon Herrera.
Alfonso and Herrera are pursuing solidly Republican House seats in Wisconsin and Texas where the incumbent isn’t seeking reelection, while Letlow is running for Senate and expected to win. The rest of MAHA’s endorsees are running for state offices.
The 20 winning candidates MAHA has endorsed in primaries this spring were mostly establishment candidates in state races who have supported MAHA’s issues, like making vaccines optional and regulating food additives. Few got any money from the MAHA groups.
Mark Gorton, who co-leads MAHA Institute and MAHA PAC with Lyons, attributed the focus on state races to an existing network of MAHA state councils. MAHA Institute focuses on state races, while MAHA Action largely focuses on federal. MAHA Action, which is led by Lyons, did not respond to request for comment.
“MAHA Action focused its effort on a small number of high impact races. Ultimately, the MAHA movement aspires to be active in every state and federal election. However, executing that goal requires a lot of hard, detailed, local work, and we are building the infrastructure to achieve it,” Gorton wrote in a statement to POLITICO.
MAHA-backed candidates have been more likely to emphasize a connection to Trump than their support from the movement or Kennedy. Half of campaign websites of candidates with MAHA endorsements mention the president, while less than 40 percent mention their support from MAHA.
A POLITICO Poll in March found only a third of Americans said they had heard of the MAHA movement and could explain what it is. One quarter of Americans said they had not heard of it.
MAHA is touting a big win this week in Iowa, where a candidate it endorsed in December, Zach Lahn, defeated Trump’s pick, Rep. Randy Feenstra, in the GOP primary for governor. Lyons earlier this year pledged to back candidates Trump supports in order to strengthen the Kennedy-Trump alliance. But Trump weighed in for Feenstra last week, six months after MAHA backed Lahn.
Lahn is an exception in making the MAHA movement a top priority, selling “Make Iowa Healthy Again” t-shirts and vowing to clean up the state’s water systems and fight agricultural monopolies. In a press release on Wednesday, Lyons called Lahn’s win a “defining moment” and said MAHA PAC “will be with him every step of the way.” The PAC helped fund statewide advertising and sent hundreds of thousands of texts and calls to Iowa GOP voters to support Lahn, according to its press release.
“Zach Lahn's recent victory in the Iowa Republican gubernatorial primary shows that MAHA is a meaningful force in American electoral politics today,” Gorton wrote to POLITICO.
But a Lahn win in November won’t change the balance of power in the states. Iowa has a Republican governor now, Kim Reynolds, who decided last year not to seek a third full term.
Republican strategists downplayed MAHA’s role in Lahn’s victory, arguing Lahn’s shoe-leather campaigning, Feenstra’s refusal to debate him, and Lahn’s endorsement by Turning Point USA, the advocacy group founded by Charlie Kirk, were also major factors. Turning Point USA has become better known since Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a Utah college last year.
“I would give [MAHA] some credit, obviously, but I wouldn't give them all of the credit. Most Iowans don't wake up or go to bed thinking about MAHA or distinguishing it from MAGA,” said David Oman, former co-chair of the Iowa Republican Party and former chief of staff to two Republican Iowa governors. “Lahn got hot at the end, and Randy was mailing it in."
Senate and House races
MAHA’s other big winner so far is Letlow, who took out an incumbent Republican senator, Bill Cassidy, last month. Almost all of MAHA PAC’s political spending — $740,000 — has gone to help her even though a Letlow win does nothing to help Republicans retain Senate control. Letlow placed 1st in the May vote, but still has to win a runoff later this month to get the party nod. Cassidy ran afoul of MAHA supporters by criticizing Kennedy’s efforts to reduce how many vaccines American children are supposed to get.
MAHA also secured a win when Herrera won the GOP nomination to represent the southwest Texas seat that Tony Gonzales quit in April after he got caught up in a sex scandal involving an aide who later took her own life. Alfonso, the son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, faces his primary in August to replace departing Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in a northern Wisconsin farm district.
Herrera has promised to be a MAHA voice in Congress, and Alfonso has committed to fighting chronic disease. “I will be an outspoken voice for getting poison out of our children’s food and getting Americans healthy again,” said Herrera on a MAHA Action call in March.
It’s only Barrett’s race, however, that has the potential to shape party control of Congress and how much Kennedy and Trump’s MAHA-MAGA alliance can accomplish legislatively. Barrett won in 2024 by less than 4 points. Trump narrowly beat his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, in the district, defeating her by 1.3 points, according to calculations in The Downballot.
In an interview with POLITICO, Barrett said MAHA was “very important” for Republican control of Congress and said it’s “one of the biggest issues” for voters in his district.
“It speaks to the concerns that people naturally have about some of the chronic disease and complications we're facing in our country,” said Barrett, whose political career started after leaving the military over Covid vaccine requirements.
MAHA PAC has not donated to Barrett, Alfonso, or Herrera. Its website states it targets races where MAHA-aligned candidates have the best chances of winning, “including competitive general election races where the MAHA message can swing the outcome.”
Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, told POLITICO MAHA was not a political play.
“The Trump administration’s commitment to working closely with the MAHA movement to deliver on the MAHA agenda isn’t about political gain, but ensuring a better future for the next generation of Americans,” he said in a statement.
‘Not a household name’
Kennedy has encouraged states to take the lead on MAHA legislation, and traveled extensively to promote his agenda in state capitals. A POLITICO analysis last year found it’s paid off, as state lawmakers have introduced hundreds of bills, often with bipartisan support, echoing his agenda. Some have passed.
But the MAHA movement’s impact on state politics isn’t as evident.
State primaries so far have been dominated by concerns over the economy. MAHA-backed candidates who won their primaries focused most heavily on issues that defined the 2024 presidential election rather than MAHA issues like food and vaccines.
More than two-thirds of these candidates focused on affordability and cutting taxes on their campaign websites, while almost half focused on immigration. Less than a third mentioned policies related to vaccine safety or the food system that are important to Kennedy and his supporters.
Fifteen of the 18 MAHA Institute-backed winners in state primaries were incumbents or candidates who’d previously held office. All but one of its 12 losses, meanwhile, involved a candidate who had never run before.
“[Voters] are not looking at it like, ‘Oh, you know what, he was endorsed by MAHA Institute…That's why I'm supporting him,’” said Marcell Strbich, a MAHA-backed candidate for Ohio state secretary who lost his primary by 40 points to incumbent Robert Sprague.
Candidates are more interested in “kitchen and table stuff” than MAHA, said Strbich.
There’s also the benefit of name recognition. MAHA Institute has made 12 endorsements in Ohio, more than any other state. All of the MAHA-backed candidates who won had previously held positions in office, including Jason Stephens, the former state House speaker, and Jay Edwards, the former House majority whip.
Gorton told POLITICO that MAHA Institute’s endorsements are not political calculations but “based solely on a candidate’s commitment to key policy areas that align with our values.”
Several candidates shared that the MAHA label remains too niche to galvanize a large share of voters. “It’s not a household name,” said John Hodgson, a MAHA-backed Kentucky state lawmaker who won his primary for re-election by 63 points. Hodgson has sponsored MAHA-aligned bills, including to eliminate the Hepatitis B vaccination requirement for school attendance and to make water fluoridation optional.
Still, some MAHA-endorsed candidates say the movement’s issues are resonating with voters even if the MAHA label remains unfamiliar.
“I don’t think [the endorsement] will move too many, but when I’m given enough time to explain where I am on those issues, I think that will move more,” said Ralph Carter, a MAHA-backed candidate in North Carolina who won his primary. Carter is seeking to flip a state House district that has been represented by the same Democrat for more than two decades but is trending conservative. Carter came close in 2024, losing by less than four percentage points. If he wins in November, he could help the GOP secure a supermajority in the North Carolina House.
The POLITICO Poll found that some of MAHA’s biggest priorities had broad bipartisan support, with the majority of Harris and Trump voters in the 2024 presidential election supporting the removal of artificial dyes in food and taking on big pharmaceutical companies.
“Sometimes when you say MAHA, anything Donald Trump…there's this political partitioning of people,” said Nate Sheets, a MAHA-backed candidate who ousted the Trump-endorsed incumbent in the GOP primary for Texas agriculture commissioner in March. Sheets is betting his focus on promoting healthy, unprocessed food will appeal to voters outside of the MAHA movement and get him over the line in November.
Other MAHA-backed candidates said they valued the endorsement but what they really needed was money.
“If MAHA wanted to really make a difference in elections, they need to not just endorse the candidates, they need to help fund them,” said Stephanie Stock, president of Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom. Stock lost her state House primary by 30 points after raising $13,607 in contributions compared to the more-than-$200,000 her opponent, Mike Kahoe, got with the help of a state GOP campaign arm.
“You can have the best of intentions, but if you can’t fund anything, it’s very hard to make it go,” Stock said.
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