Can Democrats win Maha voters after Trump let them down?

The party is hoping they can integrate the public health message with grassroots concern, but leave behind conspiracy theories

Chellie Pingree remembers when she moved to Maine as a teenager in the 1970s – she was one “hippie” among thousands in the back-to-the-land movement, when baby boomers fled to the sticks to revitalize small organic farms.

Today, she’s a Democratic US Representative for Maine, but still knee-deep in the organic movement. And she’s starting to see a lot of new faces – many pulled in by the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement, largely led by the Trump administration’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“I just went to a conference in upstate New York,” said Pingree. “I was a speaker there with Thomas Massie, the Republican from Kentucky, on a panel talking about this coming together of liberal, environmental, organic types and Republican libertarian Maha types,” she said.

Then she ticked off some of the people there: “all these young Maha people like Vani Hari,” known online as Food Babe, “and the woman from Ballerina Farm”, citing two well-known Maha influencers.

This overlap has Democrats excited. In a midterm election where public health has been on the offensive for the first time since 2020 – including a list of high-profile candidates who are doctors and nurses – the party has sought to court Maha voters who have soured on the Trump administration over the last year. The hope is the party can bring together a coalition of “pro-science” public health advocates and those highly concerned about a toxic food system and prevention.

“I’m just thrilled that there are Republicans who are activists on these issues related to ultra-processed food and chemical toxins in our food, who want healthier school lunches for our kids, and who don’t believe we should give big chemical companies immunity if they’re poisoning our food or water,” said Pingree.

However, leaders of the loose coalition formed during Kennedy’s independent bid for president in 2024 also tend to overlap with anti-vaccine advocacy and conspiracy theory – the narrow end of what some researchers describe as the online “radicalization funnel”. Further, unlike the back-to-the-land movement, many aligned with the Maha movement have something to sell.

“One of the smart things that [Kennedy] did during his presidential run was he identified a bunch of different fringe communities,” said Derek Beres, one of the hosts of the Conspirituality podcast, which tracks the Venn diagram of conspiracy theory, pseudoscience and extremism. “He was going to Farm Alliance groups, he was going to crypto conferences, and he was in the anti-vax circles, obviously. With that, he’s just made a lot of inroads with people who became known as Maha Moms.”

At a Children’s Health Defense event in September, the anti-vaccine organization Kennedy led before he became health secretary, he even pledged to investigate “chemtrails”, the long-time conspiracy theory that condensation trails from planes are in fact toxic chemicals.

Whether Democrats can woo this coalition without alienating long-time supporters, who see the party as aligned with scientists and social programs, is an open question.

“Now, we’re in a weird period of time where there’s a lot of frustration with some of the activists in Maha and feel like they still strongly support RFK, but they believe this administration is backed down on its commitment,” said Pingree. Particularly, she added, “in the glyphosate issue”.

Maha’s well-documented fracture with Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement began in 2025, when the administration announced it would continue to allow use of the pesticide dicamba, banned in some countries and known to drift across fields. Then, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a new pesticide ingredient containing Pfas, sometimes called a “forever chemical”, despite health concerns. In response, Kelly Ryerson, better known as Glyphosate Girl online, and other influencers circulated a petition for the ouster of EPA administrator Lee Zeldin.

“This isn’t Kennedy’s fault, but he seems to have absolutely no power to regulate the chemicals, even though he was put as head of this Maha commission,” said Ryerson.

Then in February this year, the administration issued an executive order describing an “adequate supply” of glyphosate as a “national security” issue. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the widely used Roundup herbicide, linked to cancer in scientific studies, and designated as a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization in 2015. Bayer denies that the product causes cancer and the EPA has found that glyphosate is “unlikely” to cause cancer. In March, the justice department backed Bayer in a so-called friend of the court brief to the supreme court, and a subsequent decision blocked thousands of lawsuits against Bayer.

“We really have seen over the last few months that the White House is committed to keeping these pesticides on the market, because they’re working on behalf of the pesticide companies,” said Ryerson. “And it’s really disappointing and entirely counter to Maha.”

Other Maha priorities, such as making American food healthier, have also fallen short. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it would define ultra-processed food in August, but failed to actually issue a definition. Kennedy oversaw a hobbled Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the worst outbreak of diarrhea-inducing cyclospora in the country’s history. Finally, he has made little progress on improving school lunch.

Most recently, Kennedy adviser Calley Means quit the administration, reportedly frustrated by the lack of progress.

As the midterms close in, Kennedy has attempted to find a victory. This week, he announced a voluntary program for hospitals to certify their food is healthy. Kennedy also successfully proposed changes to FDA law that allow food manufacturers to use ingredients “generally recognized as safe” (Gras).

And there appears to be daylight between the concerns typically espoused by Maha’s unofficial leaders and voters who identify with the cause. The biggest health concern for most Maha voters is still affordability. In a poll by Kaiser Family Foundation, 42% of Maha voters said lowering the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs was their most important health issue. That’s double the next biggest point of agreement, restricting chemicals in the food supply.

But for as much agreement Democrats appear to have on the top issues, there are also rifts, particularly on vaccines. Many in the Maha movement feel burned by Covid-era lockdowns, said Ryerson. At the same time, Kennedy has become a powerful symbol for why public health leaders decided to run for office in opposition.

“Since RFK Jr was nominated and came into office, RFK Jr has been our number one recruitment and fundraising tool – hands down,” said Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, which focuses on recruiting and electing “pro-science” Democrats. “He has motivated hundreds of doctors, public health leaders and nurses to stand up and run for the first time.”

Indeed, the list of Democratic doctors and nurses running for office across the country is impressive. Among many, physician Amy Acton is running for governor in Ohio, pediatrician Annie Andrews is running for US Senate in South Carolina, and in one of the most widely watched races in the country, Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and public health official, is running for US Senate in Michigan.

“For all intents and purposes, Maha is now dead, RIP,” said Polyak. “After this election, I think the next thing we’re going to see is RFK Jr’s head on a platter, because we know RFK Jr is a political liability.”

How far a Democratic Maha alliance will go is unclear. Pingree gave a real-world example in her own office.

“The first time I met with Moms Across America”, an organization founded by Maha influencer Zen Honeycutt, “she gave me five flyers, and one was Pfas, one was school lunch, one was glyphosate – but one was vaccines, and one was 5G. And I just said, ‘Look, I work on these three issues; I don’t work on those two issues.’”

For those, Pingree said, “You can find someone else.”