Senate will soon have a practicing physician who's a Democrat for the first time since 1938, with the election of Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in South Carolina. Her win — among many other physician candidates 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. Check out the NPR Politics Podcast for daily analysis of the biggest news out of Washington, D.C.
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. "And then, like the majority of pediatricians in America, I've cared for kids who've been shot." Guns are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. "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. Bill Cassidy, R.-La., and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan, lost their reelection 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 practice medicine, instead pursuing public health.) In the House, the six members of the Democratic doctor's caucus will be joined by at least two more: New Jersey's Dr. Adam Hamawy, a former U.S.
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