“The day that RFK Jr. was nominated to lead HHS was the day that I really seriously started considering running for this seat.”
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) — New reporting from The New Republic highlights 314 Action endorsed pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews was motivated to run for U.S. Senate to take on RFK Jr., fix our broken healthcare system and lower costs.
“As RFK Jr. and Republicans gut healthcare and make our already broken system worse, Dr. Andrews is running for office to fix it,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, President of 314 Action. “Dr. Andrews has spent her career at the bedside of kids and families on their worst day. She’s seen how the decisions made in Washington impact children in exam rooms and hospitals. Now, for the first time in 23 years, the seat is open. It’s time to elect the first female and only Democratic doctor in the U.S. Senate.”
The New Republic: She Wants to Win Lindsey Graham’s Senate Seat—and Impeach RFK Jr.
Key Points:
- “The day that RFK Jr. was nominated to lead HHS was the day that I really seriously started considering running for this seat,” [Andrews] told me on Monday. ‘RFK Jr. has been my professional archnemesis for decades, and there are thousands of pediatricians across the country who would say the same thing.”
- “I’m thinking about how we move forward as a state together, how we can get past this hyperpartisan, divisive moment and era, frankly, of American politics,” she said. “I don’t want to be a career politician. I see politics as a path to efficiently and effectively solve my patients’ and their families’ problems.”
- Now Andrews doesn’t know whom she’ll face in November, but she still knows exactly why she’s running. She wants to help fix the healthcare system—and to start by getting rid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaxxer in charge of Health and Human Services.
- Andrews argues that she’s the right candidate for a moment when health care access and affordability are top of mind for South Carolinians. “You cannot fight bad politics by staying apolitical. So the only way to fight back against the politicization of pediatric health care and health care as a whole in this country is by engaging in politics on the other side,” she said.
- Now she’s looking ahead and doesn’t seem too troubled by whoever her opponent will be.
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314 Action is the only national organization working to recruit, train and elect Democratic scientists across all levels of government—from the Senate down to local school boards. The organization is powered by a grassroots community of over six million people supporting scientists and health care professionals who will use science and facts to address the most urgent issues facing our generation.