‘Medical freedom’ takes a back seat in Florida’s midterm fights

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Republican-dominated Florida has become the preeminent lab for the medical freedom movement, with the state's leaders and lawmakers banning masks in schools and fluoride in water while questioning the efficacy of some vaccines.

But this year, those issues are landing with a thud on the campaign trail.

Even though Gov. Ron DeSantis made medical freedom a cornerstone of his time in office, and the state's conservative surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, remains a national folk hero to some MAHA groups, the issues are now overshadowed by affordability and broader scrutiny on the effects of some MAHA-influenced proposals. Most candidates this cycle have focused on economic concerns, including taxes and the effects of the AI boom, over government health care restrictions. Many campaigns, using focus groups, have found issues such as religious vaccine exemptions and informed medical consent were not high on voters' lists.

As the Covid-19 pandemic recedes from voters' memories, there is no quest for freedom from government rule — except for the parents who have ruled out government-suggested childhood vaccines, libertarian-leaning former state Sen. Jeff Brandes said.

"People were incredibly nervous about the government-required health procedures, and that's valid," Brandes said. "The big question is how that will play out."

But groups like Indiana-based Stand for Health Freedom, which has promoted several Florida medical freedom bills over the past few years, including the state's recently streamlined vaccine religious exemptions for children, are pressing on. The group's operations director, Bailey Kuykendoll, told POLITICO in an email that interest among candidates and residents has continued to grow leading up to this year's election.

"We have continued to see support grow throughout this election cycle, with additional candidates expressing support and new leadership preparing to take office ahead of the upcoming legislative session," Kuykendoll said, later adding, "Based on anecdotal feedback and conversations within the community, we believe interest appears to be increasing."

The ebbing of MAHA-favorite issues dominating Florida politics matches a national trend: The vaccine skeptics and healthy food crusaders who pushed Trump across the line in 2024 and advocated for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s HHS nomination say their vote is up for grabs in the midterms after a string of perceived losses on pesticides and chemical regulations, alongside their economic and foreign policy concerns.

Still, medical freedom has not completely vanished as a political hot topic for some voters and officials in Florida — particularly in a state with key MAHA players such as Ladapo, who still invokes the state's fight against Covid restrictions. Topics that initially seemed like a fad for state lawmakers have become a subtly unified libertarian movement laced with a shared contempt for the medical industry that votes accordingly.

Former GOP state Rep. Joel Rudman, a doctor in Santa Rosa County who operates a family clinic in Navarre, said this year's candidates have focused on more pressing issues such as food and housing costs, even as some patients continue to press for less regulation on their ability to make medical decisions.

"It may not be as urgent as the cost of beef or the price at the gas tank, but it is still very important," said Rudman, who sponsored a 2023 bill allowing doctors to refuse treatment for patients on ethical or religious grounds.. "We don't want the government to make health decisions on your behalf."

Yet concerns about government overreach into voters' health care have appear to have sharply dropped from this year's slate of election issues. Stand for Health Freedom held a candidate forum Sunday in Lakeland. Kuykendoll said former state House Speaker Paul Renner, who staunchly supported DeSantis' Covid measures, was the only GOP gubernatorial candidate invited to speak at Sunday's event.

"This was a citizen-led event organized independently by community leaders with a focus on health freedom issues," Kuykendoll said. "Given Mr. Renner's longstanding leadership on these issues, he was the only candidate invited to participate." At the event, Renner said he would push for an expansion of the Medical Freedom Act legislation lawmakers approved during the pandemic if he is elected as governor.

Mark Peterson, a policy and political science professor at UCLA, said the medical freedom movement exposed a lack of communication between doctors and patients about the pros and cons of each vaccine. Even if Republican lawmakers are no longer emphatically backing protections against Covid health requirements, many parents still have questions, and doctors and other medical professionals should be ready to inform them with facts.

"It's about trying to have more two-way communications and having respect for everyone," Peterson said. "Vaccines have been among the most profound interventions in the history of humanity. It's just hard to run counter to that."

Only a few years ago, many Florida lawmakers emphatically approved DeSantis-backed legislation that allowed parents to more easily obtain religious exemptions to opt their children out of school vaccine requirements. They also approved measures banning employers from enforcing vaccine mandates and giving protections for doctors who refuse to provide certain medical treatments. During the pandemic, DeSantis earned nationwide attention for lifting Covid-related mandates for schools and beaches while other states tightened control — even saying in a news release at the time that the moves had positioned the state to be the national leader for medical freedom.

"These expanded protections will help ensure that medical authoritarianism does not take root in Florida," the governor's office said in the release.

This year, however, lawmakers twice rejected a bill that sought to expand Florida's vaccine exemptions. The measure, SB 1756, was approved by the Senate 23-15 during this year's regular legislative session despite increasing opposition from Republicans. DeSantis even called for the reconsideration of the same bill during a subsequent special session, but state House Speaker Daniel Perez rejected his request over concerns about schoolchildren getting sick.

This year's measure would have also made permanent some of DeSantis' own administratively enacted protections that had earned him nationwide praise just a few years ago. After lawmakers rejected the measure the first time in March, he warned that unless the Legislature, particularly the House, changed course, the once-popular protections he created will go away.

"I know a lot of people in Florida really want to see these protections written into law," DeSantis said. Perez still refused to reconsider the bill.

Around the same time earlier this year, the Florida Department of Health was addressing a measles outbreak in the southwest part of the state that had already infected more than 100 people. And while the Legislature may no longer be interested in medical freedom and voters focus on other matters, the core conflict over the issue remains.

"There really is this fundamental tension on these issues, and there always has been," Peterson said. "They are requiring someone to put something in their bodies, or children's bodies, but it's for a public purpose that benefits everybody."

On the national level, Peterson said this latest push for libertarian-leaning health policy has not substantially changed conventional treatments, but it has made parents more vigilant about choosing health care options for their children. In ruby-red parts of Florida such as the Panhandle, Rudman said he stopped ordering vaccine doses because demand has plummeted.

"I can no longer keep vaccines in stock. You have to buy them in bulk, and they expire fairly quickly, and the demand for vaccinations has just fallen off the cliff," Rudman said. "I probably lost thousands of dollars on unused vaccines until I made the decision not to even order them anymore."

Rudman said much of his time at the clinic now goes toward convincing skeptical parents about the pros of giving children vaccines for polio and tetanus.

"I'm having to remind parents that surely they don't want their child to get polio or to die from tetanus from a rusty nail," Rudman said. "I can understand refusing a flu shot, but I am literally having to educate patients on the dangers of polio, which I thought I would never have to do."