Rfk Jr. Has Turned Corporate America’s Name To Mud, Politico Poll Finds

The party of business is now chock-full of voters who distrust food and pharmaceutical companies and want to regulate them.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of them and the health secretary’s drive to spread that message in Washington is proving costly for industry.

The POLITICO Poll of 3,851 U.S. adults conducted by Public First last month reveals that when it comes to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, most GOP respondents, and more than Democrats, supported restrictions on ultraprocessed foods, pesticides, seed oils, and junk food advertising, among other things. On vaccines, most Republicans shared Kennedy’s view that vaccines should be optional.

Big American brands from Coca-Cola to Kraft Heinz are getting in line, changing their recipes to accommodate Kennedy, while others — from Dunkin’ to McDonald’s — have absorbed Kennedy broadsides. Drug companies have mostly laid low as Kennedy has disparaged their products. But both the food and pharma industries are spending more on lobbying in the capital than they have in years.

For the GOP, the poll results underscore the deepening fractures within the party as its embrace of the MAHA movement and growing populist base clash with its longstanding identity as a defender of business and small government.

For America’s CEOs, the poll indicates they have good reason to hunker down, and to reconsider their PR strategies. Not only do Americans of both parties now support regulation, they also see corporate America as corrupt. Two-thirds of respondents of both parties said they believe food companies are sickening Americans to make money. Majorities of both parties say industry has captured the drug regulators.

“[Companies] should be listening carefully and responding to our concerns,” said Betsy McCaughey, a host on the conservative NewsMax network, former Republican lieutenant governor of New York, and current candidate for Connecticut governor. “Any party that wants to be successful in the United States must address the concerns of families. All families want their children to eat healthy food."

Kennedy’s boss, President Donald Trump, has pledged to eliminate more regulations than his agencies promulgate. But he’s also paired that with populist diatribes and pressure campaigns targeting industries, from the pharmaceutical to the high tech, to lower prices or build American.

Trump shored up his populist bona fides during his 2024 campaign by teaming up with Kennedy, a scion of Democratic royalty, who made a career scourging industry as an environmental and anti-vaccine activist and trial lawyer. Kennedy hasn't backed off as Trump's health secretary, blasting iconic American brands including Starbucks, Dunkin’, McDonald’s and Froot Loops. His broadside against Dunkin’ — he said it should have to prove its high-sugar iced coffees are safe to drink — set off alarms in the company’s progressive hometown, Boston.

A February Kennedy video promoting his “Eat Real Food” campaign featured boxer Mike Tyson slapping another of Dunkin’s signature offerings, a donut, to the ground. A video of Kennedy bodyslamming a man in a Twinkie costume went viral last month.

Under pressure from Kennedy, companies like Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, and PepsiCo have pledged to remove artificial dyes. Coke is now selling in America a version of its signature cola made with cane sugar, rather than high-fructose corn syrup. Restaurants such as Sweetgreen and Steak 'n Shake have promised to phase out the seed oils that Kennedy contends are unhealthy.

One big rule change is on the table. Kennedy has proposed eliminating the Food and Drug Administration's “generally recognized as safe” regulation that has allowed food makers to introduce new ingredients to their products without formal government review. The food industry has argued eliminating the regulation would stifle innovation.

Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said the poll results highlight the bipartisan support behind Kennedy’s priorities. “Americans are united on the need to urgently address chronic disease, improve nutrition, strengthen food quality, and lower health care costs.”

When asked whether the government should increase regulation on business to protect consumers even at the expense of economic growth, Trump voters were evenly split in The POLITICO Poll. A majority of Trump voters, however, supported a multitude of health-related interventions, including banning food aid recipients from using benefits to buy junk food, prohibiting children from using social media and making GLP-1 weight loss drugs more affordable. Almost three-quarters of Trump voters supported taking on big pharmaceutical companies.

It’s a major shift for the GOP. Less than two decades ago, when then-first lady Michelle Obama launched her Let’s Move! campaign to improve nutrition and address childhood obesity, Republicans in Congress ridiculed what they described as an overreaching nanny state.

MAHA supporters, industry executives and researchers say the public is more conscious of the chronic disease epidemic this time around and more inclined to blame food makers. Covid-19 vaccine mandates were a galvanizing moment for many against the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s a “good reminder and also a warning sign to those who don’t want to heed it,” said Hilda Gore, also known as Holistic Hilda and the host of the Wise Traditions podcast for the Weston A. Price Foundation, which shares MAHA goals.

Despite Kennedy’s efforts, neither GOP lawmakers nor Trump have shifted as much as their voters, a reflection of business’s deep ties in Washington.

The Consumer Brands Association, whose members include packaged food manufacturers, reported $6.93 million in lobbying last year, the highest in nearly a decade. The American Beverage Association, which represents the non-alcoholic beverage industry, reported $3.54 million in lobbying, the highest since 2010. CropLife America, which represents pesticide makers, reported its highest spend since 2018 – $2.62 million – and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents brand-name drugmakers, spent nearly $38 million, its highest on record.

PhRMA spokesperson Alex Schriver blamed other sectors of the health care industry for drug companies’ reputational woes. “Other actors across the health care system like insurers, PBMs and hospitals need to be held accountable,” he said, referencing the pharmacy benefit managers that negotiate drug prices for insurers and big employers.

The pharmaceutical industry got a reprieve in recent weeks as the administration recalibrated its MAHA strategy to focus on food ahead of tough midterm elections for the Republican Party. Last month, Kennedy rolled out an initiative to take junk food out of hospitals and has recently embarked on a road show promoting his dietary guidelines, which discourage consumption of ultraprocessed food.

Kennedy has encouraged states to regulate the ingredients food manufacturers use. More than 100 bills were introduced last year, a fivefold increase from the previous year, according to a POLITICO analysis in August. Almost a third of the measures were sponsored by at least one member of both parties.

Some have passed. Texas and Louisiana required more additive labeling. Arizona, Utah and West Virginia restricted food dyes in school lunches. Nearly two dozen states have barred low-income people who rely on federal food aid from using their benefits to purchase soft drinks and candy, up from zero at the start of last year.

“There is certainly a sense of exasperation at some of the accusations being made,” said Donnelly McDowell, chair of law firm Kelley Drye’s advertising and marketing group, which counts food companies as clients.

“If we're going to reformulate a significant portion of our product categories, what does that mean from a cost perspective? ...[Consumers] say they don't want certain artificial preservatives or artificial colors, but is that borne out in actual consumption patterns?”

Food manufacturers are leveraging the affordability crunch in responding. Jay Timmons, chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the largest lobbies in Washington, told POLITICO that rules targeting ingredients “risk undermining the system” and will raise costs for consumers.

NAM joined more than three dozen food companies and trade associations last fall in forming Americans for Ingredient Transparency, a coalition calling for a uniform federal standard.

MAHA supporters see a backdoor attempt to deter states from passing new laws and to restrict states’ regulatory powers. The federal standard NAM and its allies envision would supersede state rules.

“A unified national framework gets MAHA priorities done and delivers on President Trump's commitment to affordability,” said Andy Koenig, a former special assistant to Trump and a senior adviser to Americans for Ingredient Transparency, in a statement.

In a December interview with Bloomberg, Kennedy said a federal standard was “on the table for discussion.”

No one on Capitol Hill has introduced such a bill yet, but industry has secured a number of other wins against the MAHA movement.

In February, Trump signed an executive order to boost the production of glyphosate, the active ingredient in weedkiller Roundup, and the pending Republican-led farm bill includes a measure banning states from introducing tougher pesticide labeling requirements. Last month, a federal judge blocked Kennedy’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, a win for drugmakers.

The MAHA movement is fighting back. Activists have planned a rally outside the Supreme Court on April 27, when judges will hear arguments in a case pitting Roundup’s maker, the German conglomerate Bayer, against a man who claims the herbicide gave him cancer. The judges’ ruling will determine whether federal law preempts thousands of state-level “failure-to-warn” lawsuits. The Trump administration has already sided with Bayer in the case.

Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.