Politicians typically do foolish issues to attract consideration to their favourite points. In 2015, then-Senator Jim Inhofe famously introduced a snowball onto the ground of Congress to argue in opposition to the existence of local weather change. Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene toted a balloon to the 2023 State of the Union to mock the Biden administration’s dealing with of a Chinese language spy craft. However when it comes to sheer spectacle, few can high Jared Polis and his “forbidden” feast.
In 2015, Polis, then a Democratic congressman from Colorado, dined on hemp scones and washed them down with a glass of uncooked milk. The purpose was to spotlight the purported absurdity of the federal government’s guidelines for what individuals can and can’t eat. He was pushing Congress to go the Milk Freedom Act, a invoice that aimed to make unpasteurized dairy simpler for Individuals to purchase. On the time, the beverage was a delicacy for hippies in cities like Boulder, not a rallying cry for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the “Make America Wholesome Once more” motion. In Could, the well being secretary, who has mentioned he drinks solely uncooked milk, downed a shot of the stuff throughout a podcast taping within the White Home.
Polis, now the governor of Colorado, nonetheless speaks fondly of his stunt. “Uncooked milk is comparatively low-risk in comparison with many issues that individuals select to do of their on a regular basis lives,” he informed me not too long ago. “We should always lean into freedom,” he mentioned, and permit “individuals to make their very own selections on what to eat.” (For the report, uncooked milk can result in severe instances of foodborne sickness.) I spoke with Polis not simply to ask him about unsafe milk. Few distinguished Democratic politicians need something to do with RFK Jr. and his agenda to remake American well being; Polis is the exception.
From the second final yr that Kennedy was picked to steer the Division of Well being and Human Companies, Polis has taken a special route than the remainder of his celebration. Many rapidly got here out and mentioned that Kennedy’s previous anti-vaccine activism disqualified him from the place. “I’m excited by the information that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr,” Polis posted on X. “He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and can assist make America wholesome once more.” Throughout Polis’s first yr as governor, in 2019, he allied with Kennedy in opposing a invoice that will have made it tougher for folks to get vaccine exemptions for his or her children. Since Kennedy’s affirmation, Polis has labored immediately with the Trump administration. In August, he bought permission from Washington to ban the acquisition of soda utilizing meals stamps in Colorado, a controversial coverage that Kennedy has repeatedly held up as one in every of his priorities. To date, 12 states have signed on to check the thought—Colorado is the one one that’s run by a Democrat.
After I requested Polis why he helps RFK Jr.’s soda agenda, his response was scattered. He informed me that if individuals actually wish to drink soda, they nonetheless can, identical to how Coloradans are free to purchase marijuana or alcohol. “Folks with their very own cash could make no matter selections they need,” he mentioned. However the authorities “shouldn’t be subsidizing cavities and diabetes,” he added. He additionally claimed that banning soda from being bought with meals stamps was an act of “ethical integrity.” The food-stamps program—formally the Supplemental Diet Help Program—is meant to assist vitamin, he mentioned, and “soda has zero dietary content material.”
The response underscores the eclectic nature of Polis’s politics. Whereas in Congress, he was at one level the one Democratic member of the Home Liberty Caucus—a house of staunch libertarianism—however he additionally sat on the Congressional Progressive Caucus. As governor, he has taken a decidedly populist, and at instances combative, method to reforming the health-care business; inside a month in workplace, he arrange an aptly named Workplace of Saving Folks Cash on Healthcare. Polis’s different political views make him rather a lot like Kennedy, who was a Democrat till 2023. Kennedy has managed to bridge three particular tendencies—towards fiscal conservatism, social liberalism, and a perception that bettering societal well being is an ethical crucial—and current them as one overarching ideology. Throughout his affirmation listening to in January, Kennedy struck an identical tone in explaining the MAHA agenda. “This isn’t simply an financial problem. It’s not only a national-security problem. It’s a religious problem, and it’s a ethical problem,” Kennedy mentioned. “We can’t stay as much as our function as an exemplary nation, as an ethical authority around the globe, after we are writing off a whole era of children.” (An HHS spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
Polis, in different phrases, will be the closest factor there may be to a MAHA Democrat. After I requested him what he considered that title, he pushed again, noting that MAHA is a bit too near MAGA. “Sadly it’s just one letter away from an acronym that’s one thing I’m staunchly against,” he mentioned. The governor additionally went out of his method to distance himself from Kennedy’s current strikes to roll again vaccine entry. Kennedy’s selections—specifically his push to slender approval of COVID vaccines—have “slanted the sphere in opposition to particular person alternative,” he defined. Though Polis opposes vaccine mandates, he’s not an anti-vaxxer. Final month, the governor bucked Kennedy by signing an order permitting pharmacists to proceed giving COVID pictures with no prescription. “We is not going to permit pointless pink tape or selections from Washington to maintain Coloradans from accessing life-saving vaccines,” he wrote on X on the time. Yesterday, Polis joined greater than a dozen different Democratic governors to kind a public-health alliance to counter RFK Jr.
Polis’s positioning appears politically savvy. Kennedy’s concentrate on tackling weight problems and persistent illness by overhauling the American weight loss plan is widespread—way more so than his insurance policies limiting vaccines. (Based on one ballot by More healthy Colorado, a nonpartisan group, residents within the state assist banning the acquisition of soda with SNAP advantages—albeit by a slender margin.) And by not overtly figuring out with MAHA, Polis avoids alienating himself from Colorado’s Democratic voters. “They consider it as Trump’s label,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has surveyed voters on the subject, informed me about MAHA. “Should you put Trump in entrance of Cheez-Its, Democrats wouldn’t prefer it.”
Polis isn’t the one Democrat attempting to do an identical dance. Jesse Gabriel, a Democratic state lawmaker in California who spearheaded the state’s current effort to section out ultra-processed meals in faculties—one other Kennedy precedence—has sought to attract distinctions between his efforts and people of the administration. “Right here in California, we are literally doing the work to guard our children’ well being, and we’ve been doing it since nicely earlier than anybody had ever heard of the MAHA motion,” Gabriel mentioned in a current press convention.
Earlier than RFK Jr. got here alongside, Democrats had been certainly the celebration of more healthy diets. As my colleague Tom Bartlett not too long ago wrote, “Let’s Transfer,” Michelle Obama’s marketing campaign to cut back childhood weight problems, has plenty of similarities with MAHA. Kennedy has pressured corporations to cease utilizing artificial meals dyes, prompting pink states to go food-dye rules of their very own. They’re following within the footsteps of California, which was the primary state to ban a dye, Crimson 3, again in 2023.
The GOP’s embrace of those meals insurance policies has put Democrats in an odd place. The celebration hasn’t fairly discovered the best way to work together with the MAHA motion. Democrats could be severe about tackling persistent illness, however they’ve ceded that problem to Kennedy in current months, possible due to trepidation about being seen as allies of the secretary. Democratic strategists I spoke with emphasised that their celebration wants to determine a message that demonstrates it’s extra severe than the Trump administration in attacking these points—particularly one that may attraction to sure teams (specifically suburban mothers) which can be gravitating to the MAHA message.
Even Polis, who’s keen to go additional than most different Democrats in aligning himself with RFK Jr., has struggled to articulate his personal various to MAHA. (After I requested how he’d like his report as governor to be remembered, if not as one in every of a MAHA Democrat, he merely mentioned, “Efficient.”) As we spoke, it typically felt like Polis and I had been speaking previous one another. After I requested him why different Democratic governors weren’t pursuing a ban on shopping for soda utilizing meals stamps, he talked about his personal opposition to Republicans’ current cuts to SNAP. For probably the most half, Polis didn’t wish to discuss Kennedy; he wished to speak about his health-care achievements. Therein lies the predicament for Polis, and different members of his celebration: RFK Jr. has so rapidly laid declare to problems with meals and vitamin that it’s tough to speak about them in any respect with out invoking the well being secretary.
