Scientists and STEM-linked candidates seek political office

March for Science organizers recently observed that six months ago, “more than one million people from around the world marched to defend the role of science.” Earlier, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow had expressed a common sentiment in accusing newly elected president Donald Trump of corrupting “truth, facts and science.”

The Atlantic had reported on the advocacy group 314 Action , which calls itself “committed to electing more STEM candidates to office” and to “fighting the Trump administration’s attacks on science.” With the 2018 elections a year away—and with off-year state elections imminent in New Jersey and Virginia—314 Action is endorsing a handful of candidates. Journalists are paying some modest attention to their STEM connections.

314 Action takes its name from the ubiquitous mathematical constant pi. At the national level, the organization endorses one Senate candidate and six for the House, plus one gubernatorial candidate: Virginia lieutenant governor and pediatrician Ralph Northam. All are Democrats. When the PBS Newshour asked about that, 314 president Shaughnessy Naughton answered, “Well, although we do want to see more Republicans act on combating climate change, currently the difference in the two parties’ platforms is hard to ignore. And so we did feel that we had to pick a team.”

Roll Call reported in September that the endorsees will get financial support, that 314 Action “has raised about $1 million this year and is hoping to raise between $5 and $7 million for the 2018 cycle,” and that the organization has 40 000 contributors and 225 000 members.

The 314 Action–endorsed Senate candidate is Nevada Democratic congresswoman Jacky Rosen, a computer programmer and software developer. The Hill reports that in fundraising, she has been narrowly outpacing the Republican incumbent, Dean Heller, though he has lots of cash on hand. She opposes reviving the project to create an underground national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

The House of Representative endorsees are three women and three men. California pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran, says Salon, is running in part because she was inspired by threats to Obamacare that she sees as threatening her patients too. A family doctor in Utah, Kathie Allen , is running for the seat that was held until recently by Republican Jason Chaffetz. Pennsylvania candidate Chrissy Houlahan , who has an engineering degree from Stanford and a master’s in technology and policy from MIT, worked as a chemistry teacher in Philadelphia.

Joseph Kopser, a West Point aerospace engineering graduate, is running in Texas against no less than Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee. Salon points out that since entering Congress 30 years ago, Smith has taken in nearly $700 000 in oil and gas industry donations. Kopser told Salon that “Smith’s insistence on denying [climate] science is literally taking the food off the tables of his constituents.” He said that climate change explains the failed peach crop in his district: “This past winter never got cold enough to kill off the pest population in the region, and when spring came they fed on the planted peach crop.” In Virginia, Roger Dean Huffstetler , holder of a chemistry degree, is also running against a Republican whom 314 calls a climate denier. In Orange County, California, 314-endorsed California congressional candidate and PhD neuroscientist Hans Keirstead , who founded a stem cell research center at the University of California, Irvine, has drawn both local and national attention for his STEM credentials.

Unmentioned by 314 Action is Jess Phoenix , a California volcanologist seeking a seat in the House. The home page of the Democratic candidate exclaims, “Stop Trump’s war on science—elect a scientist.” CNN ran a seven-minute interview with her last summer. The Washington Post had profiled her in April.

314 is endorsing five candidates for state legislative seats in the November 2017 off-year elections:

• Incumbent Andrew Zwicker , a New Jersey resident and Johns Hopkins University physics PhD who heads education outreach at the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory
• Cheryl Turpin , a science teacher running in Virginia
• Laura Shaw of the telecommunications industry, who came to New Jersey in 1981 as a Bell Labs engineer
• Christine Chen , a New Jersey neuroscientist and health-care executive
• Hala Ayala in Virginia, a Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity specialist

The 314 site also spotlights six sitting Democratic members of Congress with STEM credentials. In California: Jerry McNerney , a PhD mathematician and energy expert, and two physicians, Ami Bera and Raul Ruiz . In New York: Louise Slaughter , a microbiologist with a master’s degree in public health, and engineer Paul Tonko , who formerly led the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. In Massachusetts, Rep. Seth Moulton holds an undergraduate physics degree from Harvard University.

The site lists a few STEM candidates for local office too, starting with UC Irvine professor of physics and astronomy Kev Abazajian . On 3 October, Scientific American published his testimonial “Why a physicist is running for city council: It used to be that scientists were frowned on if they ran for public office, but the rampantly antiscience attitudes of many politicians are changing all that.”

Time‘s April article on STEM candidates, leaving aside general STEM connections, pointed out that there are only five people in Congress “who identify as scientists,” or less than one percent of the 535. Time added, “There is just a single, lonely physicist—Representative Bill Foster of Illinois. In a Congress stuffed with lawyers (222 of them) and bankers and other businesspeople (at least 99) that’s not nearly enough.”

Steven T. Corneliussen is Physics Today‘s media analyst. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.