‘i Share Your Outrage’: Democrats Woo Maha Moms Ahead Of The Midterms

The MAHA base is furious with the Trump administration over its promotion of a controversial pesticide. Democrats up for election this fall see a prime political opportunity in the infighting.

President Donald Trump’s executive order on glyphosate, a chemical used in industrial farming, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s defense of that move, drove a wedge into the Make America Healthy Again movement. As Trump’s Justice Department prepares to back the chemical maker’s Supreme Court bid for legal immunity, it’s exacerbating MAHA’s existing frustrations with an administration that has had a checkered record on addressing their top priorities.

Many grassroots members are channeling that disappointment into action heading into November’s midterm elections. Democrats, meanwhile, are mobilizing to win over these disaffected MAHA voters as internal polling highlights the opportunity.

House Majority Forward, a nonprofit allied with House Democratic leadership, dropped seven figures in late February on a digital ad accusing Kennedy of betraying the movement he founded and “undermining food and medicine safety.” The ad is running in five districts held by Republicans that the party is aiming to flip in November — in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“He promised to make America healthier,” the ad’s narrator says of Kennedy, adding that House Republicans stood by “while he makes us sicker.”

Individual Democratic candidates have embraced the message as well.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who faces a challenge from a MAHA-aligned Republican candidate as he seeks reelection this year, is hammering the administration in speeches and social media posts for “putting chemical company profits over Americans’ health and safety.” In an interview, he said he is also “in constant dialogue with a lot of the leaders in the MAHA movement.”

“There has been a natural alliance for me with the group of people that also found common cause, or at least hope, with the Trump administration, and that is more and more increasingly being betrayed,” he told POLITICO.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who faces several GOP challengers as well as a Democratic primary opponent in her bid to hang onto her seat, has led the charge in the House, introducing bills and amendments to undo Trump’s recent executive order and allow stricter regulation of agricultural chemicals — actions that have drawn praise from MAHA leaders with large followings.

In closed-door Democratic caucus meetings in January during negotiations over the farm bill, Pingree stressed to her colleagues the “importance of everybody getting to know the MAHA moms in their district.”

Her advice appears to be resonating. At a marathon House markup of the farm bill this week, a senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) took time to “speak directly to the MAHA movement.”

“I share your outrage,” he said. “I'm disgusted by corporations pumping toxins into our air and water. Chronic disease and cancer are skyrocketing while our government cheers them on. And I believe the direction this farm bill is going, the direction this country is going under Republican leadership, is a betrayal.”

Glyphosate, often sold under the brand name Roundup, is one of the most commonly used herbicides. The product’s maker, Monsanto, and its parent company, Bayer, have faced thousands of lawsuits alleging that it causes cancer — including some Kennedy helped bring prior to his 2024 presidential run — prompting the company to press all three branches of government for protection from litigation. Without such immunity, Bayer has warned that mounting legal costs could force the company to sell the chemical only in states with state liability shields, threatening the nation’s food supply chain.

Kennedy has echoed the company’s concerns when defending the recent executive order, arguing that shoring up domestic production of glyphosate will reduce dependence on “adversarial nations” and insure food prices don’t spike.

Food safety and environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety have pushed back, noting that there’s no imminent, new risk to glyphosate supply. And while the nonprofit executives and lobbyists who promote MAHA’s agenda in Washington are defending the administration for now, many prominent MAHA voices say they don’t believe the administration’s rationale.

Even grassroots MAHA leaders who remain supportive of Kennedy and Trump note that their fellow activists are “pissed,” and say Democrats could win over many of the movement’s members this November if they lean into its health priorities.

“When it comes to making America healthy, I really don't care how it gets done. If a Democrat were to say to me, ‘Hey, we've got this plan.’ I would say, ‘Sure, I would vote for you,’” said Claire Dooley, a Mississippi-based documentary filmmaker and MAHA activist who has worked with Kennedy and the anti-vaccine advocacy group he founded, Children's Health Defense. “A lot of general MAHA voters don't necessarily have a strong party affiliation, they're just going to pick who is going to get it done.”

Dooley added that many MAHA activists she knows used to identify as Democrats, and could be especially open to Democrats’ outreach in a midterm year when Trump will not be on the ballot.

Dave Murphy, a former fundraiser for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential bid, stressed that Democrats have a chance to benefit from not only MAHA votes but also the movement’s money and organizing power.

Murphy said he and other activists are in the process of creating new lobbying and electoral organizations to back candidates from either party who explicitly support MAHA policies.

“We will be targeting Republicans in Congress that have stood against us, and we will be rewarding people that are brave enough to stand up,” he told POLITICO.

He estimates that a minimum of 10, and as many as 20, Republicans could lose their seats on the pesticide issue alone. The MAHA-aligned Informed Consent Action Network released a poll this week of thousands of people in its own network, which found overwhelming opposition to the Trump administration’s actions on glyphosate.

Democratic strategists say their internal polling and focus group research bears out the risk to Republicans of disappointing MAHA voters.

In a poll of 2,945 people conducted on February 25, Blue Rose Research, a data analytics firm that supports Democrats, found that half of swing voters and 39 percent of Trump voters said that the government should stop protecting glyphosate because of its health impacts.

When asked whether the executive order reduced their trust in Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again, more than a fifth of swing voters said it made them slightly less confident in the president, while 16 percent reported feeling much less confident.

The firm’s research director, Ali Mortell, argues the party is leaving votes on the table if they fail to capitalize on the current rift in the movement that helped carry Kennedy and Trump to power.

“This is absolutely a messaging opportunity for Democrats,” Mortell said. “MAHA and MAHA-coded topics have been a clear messaging opportunity for Democrats the entire time — it's not something that's just bubbling up now.”

Reached for comment, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon referred POLITICO to Kennedy’s recent social media statements and interviews.

In a post on X.com, Kennedy defended Trump’s executive order as a short-term, necessary evil, saying the U.S. agricultural system depends heavily on pesticides, and that access can’t be shut off overnight. He also promised that he and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were working on helping farmers transition away from heavy pesticide use.

After several days of backlash from prominent MAHA activists, Kennedy struck a different tone on the Joe Rogan podcast, saying he wasn’t happy with the executive order, “to put it mildly,” and didn’t like that the Trump administration is supporting Bayer in a lawsuit taken up by the Supreme Court that could make it harder for people to sue over the health effects of glyphosate.

Brad Woodhouse, a former DNC leader who helms the health care advocacy group Protect Our Care, sees Kennedy's statements as a sign of “how worried he is about his reputation and Trump's reputation with this cohort of voters.”

That gives Democrats an opening to argue, Woodhouse said, that their party has remained steadfast on health and environmental issues while Republicans have mostly paid “lip service.”

“Democrats going back to Michelle Obama have been in favor of a lot of the same healthy eating, less processed foods policies” MAHA is pushing, he said. “And, of course, Michelle Obama was ridiculed for it by some of the same people who are in charge now.”

Most Democrats, however, are keeping their health care messaging focused on costs, an issue they argue resonates with a far broader electorate than MAHA.

“We're dealing with a total catastrophe of government where you have to worry about everything from the rule of law to voting rights to health care to Medicaid to the budget, and [MAHA issues] are rarely front of mind for most Democrats, unless you're on the Agriculture Committee or it's a big issue in your district,” lamented Pingree. “I've been looking for ways to help more of them to engage on it.”

Yet a growing number are joining Pingree in making a concerted effort to woo MAHA voters and take advantage of their frustrations with the Trump administration.

Richard Pan, a pediatrician and former state senator running in a crowded House primary to represent a newly drawn district in Sacramento, California, said the message is also resonating on the campaign trail.

In addition to hitting the glyphosate issue in his fundraising emails and social media posts, Pan has accused the Trump administration of hypocrisy around mercury regulation. He noted that Kennedy touted the removal of a little-used preservative in vaccines over concerns about mercury — a move that made vaccines more expensive and logistically difficult to administer — but did not speak up while Trump pursued rules and policies that are expected to increase mercury and other cancer-causing pollutants from coal plants.

Pan sees an opening for more Democrats to say to MAHA voters: “Who is really trying to reduce the amount of toxins in the environment? It's not Donald Trump and his administration. It's not the Republicans.”

Woodhouse agrees with the wisdom of the move. Even if Democrats fail to win many votes from the MAHA camp, highlighting the ways Kennedy and Trump have let their supporters down, he said, could widen the current “enthusiasm gap” between the parties in a midterm year when small differences in turnout have national implications.

“All 2025 and so far in 2026, like with the early vote in Texas, there's a big gap right now between Democrats who really want to get out and vote and hold Trump and Republicans accountable, and Republicans, a lot of whom are staying home,” he said. “One of the last things that the MAHA-MAGA-Republican-Trump political coalition needs is even less enthusiasm.”

Marcia Brown contributed reporting.