Doctors Win Big in the Midterms, With a Practising Democratic Physician Entering the Senate for the First Time Since 1938

The US Senate will soon have a practising physician who is a Democrat for the first time since 1938, with the election of Dr Annie Andrews, a paediatrician, in South Carolina.

Her win — among many other physician candidates on Tuesday night — marks a dramatic shift when it comes to doctors with political power across the country. Historically, doctors have been elected to Congress more often as Republicans, not Democrats. But that changed this cycle.

In the recent past, the Republican Party attracted doctor-candidates who were essentially small business people who had concerns about high taxes and government overreach. The new crop of candidates from health professions often work for large hospital systems and are interested in issues that align with Democratic priorities like public health, equity and affordability.

Andrews told NPR before she won that she was motivated to enter politics after watching parents worry about the cost of things like inhalers for asthma patients and insulin for kids with diabetes.

"I watch as worried parents leave the hospital in the evening so that they can go work their third shift job just so they can make ends meet," she said. She added that, like the majority of paediatricians in America, she has cared for kids who have been shot. Guns are the leading cause of death for children in the US.

"It really clicked to me that the path to catalyzing this change that I want to see in America for the children in America is through politics," she explained.

In the current Senate, all four of the physicians are Republicans. Two of them, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, lost their re-election bids this year. With the election of South Carolina's Andrews and Dr Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, in Michigan, there will now be an equal number of Republican and Democratic physicians in the upper chamber. El-Sayed trained as a physician but did not do a residency or practise medicine, instead pursuing public health.

In the House, the six members of the Democratic doctors' caucus will be joined by at least two more: New Jersey's Dr Adam Hamawy, a former US Army surgeon, and paediatrician Dr Richard Pan in California. In the GOP doctors' caucus, neurosurgeon Dr John Cowan was elected in Georgia, but at least two incumbents lost their seats, with a few races still too close to call.

Many of these new Democratic physician-lawmakers were recruited and backed by 314 Action, a name that refers to the mathematical constant pi. The organisation supports progressive candidates with science backgrounds to run for office, and it invested more than $30 million in dozens of Democratic candidates competing in state and federal races, including 48 physicians.

The group's president, Shaughnessy Naughton, says the organisation does leadership development and recruits scientists to run across the country, then helps candidates with their campaign strategy, communication strategy, media training, local and national media exposure and fundraising.

Those candidates won big on Tuesday. In addition to big national names like Senators-elect Andrews and El-Sayed, and Governor-elect Dr Amy Acton of Ohio, many of the down-ballot candidates 314 Action supported won as well. Among them are several incoming state legislators who will be the only elected physicians in their chambers: Dr Nikhil Wagle in Iowa, Dr Amelia Gallitano-Mendel in Arizona, and Dr Jarod Fox in Florida.

Naughton attributes that success to health care and affordability being front of mind. She said polls show the public trusts doctors, and the candidates effectively countered messaging from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.