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 by way of 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 folks can and can’t eat. He was pushing Congress to move 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 advised me not too long ago. “We must always lean into freedom,” he mentioned, and permit “folks to make their very own selections on what to eat.” (For the file, uncooked milk can result in critical circumstances 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 12 months that Kennedy was picked to guide the Division of Well being and Human Providers, Polis has taken a distinct route than the remainder of his social gathering. Many shortly 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 12 months as governor, in 2019, he allied with Kennedy in opposing a invoice that might have made it harder 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 among his priorities. Up to now, 12 states have signed on to check the thought—Colorado is the one one that’s run by a Democrat.
Once I requested Polis why he helps RFK Jr.’s soda agenda, his response was scattered. He advised me that if folks actually need 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 Vitamin Help Program—is meant to help 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 occasions 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 opinions 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 enhancing societal well being is an ethical crucial—and current them as one overarching ideology. Throughout his affirmation listening to in January, Kennedy struck the same 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 not reside as much as our function as an exemplary nation, as an ethical authority world wide, once we are writing off a complete era of children.” (An HHS spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
Polis, in different phrases, would be the closest factor there’s to a MAHA Democrat. Once I requested him what he considered that title, he pushed again, noting that MANY 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—particularly 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 won’t 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 type a public-health alliance to counter RFK Jr.
Polis’s positioning appears politically savvy. Kennedy’s give attention to tackling weight problems and persistent illness by overhauling the American food plan is widespread—rather more so than his insurance policies limiting vaccines. (Based on one ballot by More healthy Colorado, a nonpartisan group, residents within the state help banning the acquisition of soda with SNAP advantages—albeit by a slender margin.) And by not brazenly 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, advised me about MAHA. “When you put Trump in entrance of Cheez-Its, Democrats wouldn’t prefer it.”
Polis isn’t the one Democrat attempting to do the same dance. Jesse Gabriel, a Democratic state lawmaker in California who spearheaded the state’s current effort to part out ultra-processed meals in colleges—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 youngsters’ 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 social gathering of more healthy diets. As my colleague Tom Bartlett not too long ago wrote“Let’s Transfer,” Michelle Obama’s marketing campaign to scale back childhood weight problems, has lots of similarities with MAHA. Kennedy has pressured corporations to cease utilizing artificial meals dyes, prompting pink states to move food-dye laws 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 social gathering hasn’t fairly found out easy methods to work together with the MAHA motion. Democrats is perhaps critical 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 social gathering wants to determine a message that demonstrates it’s extra critical than the Trump administration in attacking these points—particularly one that may enchantment to sure teams (particularly 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. (Once I requested how he’d like his file as governor to be remembered, if not as one among a MAHA Democrat, he merely mentioned, “Efficient.”) As we spoke, it usually felt like Polis and I had been speaking previous one another. Once 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 essentially the most half, Polis didn’t need to speak about Kennedy; he wished to speak about his health-care achievements. Therein lies the predicament for Polis, and different members of his social gathering: RFK Jr. has so shortly 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.
