From the lab to the legislature: STEM professionals run for political office

In one of this year’s primary elections, a physicist and science educator took to the campaign trail.

Ramón Barthelemy, a physics and astronomy education researcher at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, was pursuing a seat in the Utah House of Representatives to represent District 24. He challenged 15-year incumbent and fellow Democrat Joel Briscoe for the opportunity to represent more than 43,000 residents of Salt Lake City.

More than 200 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals like Barthelemy are running for office at the state and municipal level this year, more than ever before. Though races at the top of the ticket rightly receive a lot of attention, the results of down-ballot races determine many of the policies that affect people’s daily lives, including how federal policies are implemented at the local or state level.

Barthelemy’s campaign targeted the value of science education and literacy in his district, and he believed his background as a scientist could help increase access to STEM education, improve local air quality, and encourage local students to pursue STEM careers at nearby tech companies.

“I think it is critical, now more than ever, that we have scientists engaged in the political process,” Barthelemy said. “The challenges we are faced with — not just as a state, not just as a country, but as a species — are technical and scientific, and we need technical expertise in order to solve them.”

Climate change, pollution, ethical technology development, energy independence, the space race, public health: Solving these problems requires a partnership between scientists, who have the expertise to understand these issues, and politicians, who have the resources and influence to enact solutions.

More and more, scientists are choosing to engage more deeply in the political process and run for office themselves.

Though science-based facts are not the be-all, end-all when crafting policy, this engagement brings scientific knowledge and problem-solving skills into legislative chambers at all levels of governance and gives science and its practitioners a greater voice in the political process.

“So many of the big issues that we face as a nation, communities, and world have science at their core.…For us to not be part of [solving these issues] is a huge mistake,” said Kristopher Larsen, who helps manage data collection for Mars missions at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and is a former mayor of Nederland, Colorado.

Why jump in?

Scientists run for office for reasons as varied and individual as the scientists themselves. Some have always felt called to public service and see governance as a way to give back to their communities. Some become concerned that officials have failed to act on climate change or other issues with science-based solutions.

“Whether you care about our nuclear policy, or climate change, or health care, or education, we benefit by having scientists as part of those discussions,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, founder and president of 314 Action, a political action fund that helps scientists run for office in the United States. “Any issue benefits by having scientists at the governing table,” she said.

Still others, including Barthelemy, have grown concerned with rising anti-science and anti-education sentiment in the United States and feel they are in a unique position to combat it. They chose to fight back on politicians’ turf.

“There are a lot of people who believe that science can help us live better lives and that science really does need to be front and center when we’re making public policy,” said Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist, science advocate, and former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. “We have to step up and say, ‘This is wrong. This is right. We have evidence and data to support that,’” Phoenix said. “There’s a whole group of people who really value science, and science needs champions.”

The perceived lack of action to address climate change was one of the issues that drove Naughton, a former chemist, to campaign to represent Pennsylvania’s 8th District in the U.S. House in 2014. Naughton had also grown alarmed by attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the failure to combat gun violence — or even collect data on it — after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Evidence-based solutions exist to stop climate change, reduce gun violence, and secure health care, so she felt that the lack of progress on these issues “wasn’t a problem with the science. This was a problem with policymakers. And the only way to fix that was to run for Congress,” she said, and champion science-based solutions in the halls of governance.

The election of Donald Trump and his administration’s perceived efforts to undermine science were what prompted Phoenix to consider a run for office. “When Trump was elected,” she said, “it was a shock to the science ecosystem.” She was alarmed that the Trump administration was not just ignoring the best available science when it came to issues like climate change but also appearing to work counter to the best interests of both the public and the environment.

“That really motivated me to step up and say, ‘Why can’t scientists run for office?’” Phoenix remembered. She announced her candidacy for a seat in the U.S. House representing what is now California’s 27th district at the 2017 March for Science. Although her campaign was unsuccessful — today, the district is represented by Mike Garcia (R-Santa Clarita) — she has continued her science advocacy by becoming an ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“People who represent us in government, especially at the federal level, are supposed to be drawn from a wide array of backgrounds,” Phoenix said, “but it’s mainly lawyers and career politicians, and you aren’t seeing janitors and nurses and scientists.”

Larsen, who served as Nederland’s mayor between 2016 and 2022 and is currently a town trustee, took an early interest in politics and got involved in his community while working as a postdoc. He started by joining an advisory board that helps preserve open space and trails, which spoke to his love for skiing, mountain biking, and hiking. “This was my way to get to know how the town works,” he said.

Nederland’s mayor and trustees oversee zoning issues, public works, community engagement, emergency service access, and sustainability efforts. In his small town (population: 1,500), “the politics we do doesn’t end up on the front page of the paper,” he said. Only occasionally do larger crises, like a wildfire or an attempted bombing in town, break the mold.

Facing a divided nation

From the new space race to climate change to COVID-19, science has become more politicized than ever. Some scientist-candidates say their research-based approach is a strength when addressing issues both inside and outside the sphere of science.

When Ben Dewell, a meteorologist and a director of the Stallion Springs Community Service District, first moved into California’s 20th District in 2015, “I didn’t make it known that I was a scientist.” The historically red district was represented by then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). Dewell strongly objected to what he felt was McCarthy putting his loyalty to former President Trump over the interests of his constituents.

Dewell initially ran for office in 2022 to unseat McCarthy, first as a Democrat and then again as a No Party candidate. With the encouragement of his neighbors, he organized a campaign on his own without the assistance of local organizing groups or political action committees. “I was less than grassroots, and to this day, it’s still less than grassroots,” he joked about his campaign. “It’s not even a seedling.”

Although his congressional campaign was unsuccessful, Dewell still feels that his scientific, data-driven way of looking at issues is an asset in his hyperpartisan district, today represented by Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield).

“A lot of people who have come up to me [have] said, ‘I didn’t know you were a scientist. What do you do?’” Dewell said. “And I’ve explained it to them, and they’ve smiled” encouragingly. Dewell also serves on the board of the Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District that monitors the district’s air quality and is currently running for a seat on the Kern County Board of Supervisors in a November special election.

“It would have been inconsistent for me not to run in service to the same constituency still in need of a logical, rational, nonpartisan voice,” he said. “My ballot designation still includes ‘scientist.’”

Brianna Titone (D), a geochemist who flipped her Colorado district from red to blue in 2018, felt that her background as a scientist was a real asset to her campaign.

“My district has a lot of engineers and a lot of scientists,” she said. Colorado House of Representatives District 27 represents thousands of people who work at scientific institutions, including the Colorado School of Mines, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a U.S. Geological Survey center.

But as a first-time candidate, a Democrat, and a trans woman running in a red district, Titone was at a disadvantage when pitted against the incumbent GOP candidate. Her experience as a consultant on groundwater flow for the mining industry and a geology software engineer provided a way for her to engage with constituents on familiar ground. “I really relied a lot on my scientific background to talk to my voters,” she said. However, she also acknowledged that public trust of science was greater when she was elected than it is now.

“There is a subset of the population that is distrustful,” Phoenix said. “But what we have found among swing voters is that there is a lot of trust of science, scientists, and expertise in general. And that really bodes well for our country’s future and for scientific candidates.” Although the number has declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 73 percent of Americans still have confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests.

“For a lot of voters, as crazy as it sounds, [being a scientist] is almost a value statement,” Phoenix explained. “Because people look at scientists as truth tellers, as honest brokers, and that’s really what they want from their elected leaders.”

The scientific consensus

The scientific community has expressed mixed reactions to scientists entering the political arena. Many scientist-candidates recall receiving relieved looks, at best, or negative pushback, at worst, from their fellow scientists.

The feelings of relief sometimes come from scientists who want to have a greater voice in government but are not in a position to run for office themselves, Phoenix explained. Running a campaign for federal office, for instance, requires a significant investment of time and money, and actually holding that office is a full-time career. Running for a local position is less expensive but can be just as time-consuming, and though these positions are often part-time, their lower pay often necessitates holding a second job.

As such, the responsibilities of running for and holding office can discourage scientists (and those in most professional communities) who are early in their career, are seeking tenure, are the primary earner in their household, have family caregiving responsibilities, or experience bias because of their identity.

“Admittedly, I was pretty naive about the process,” Naughton said. Although her congressional campaign was unsuccessful, it led her to found 314 Action, which has helped elect more than 400 scientists to public office at all levels of governance. She wanted to provide scientists with the tools, resources, and knowledge base that she lacked when she first ran for office.

When you want to run for office but lack the privilege, Phoenix said, seeing someone else step up can be a relief.

“When I tell other scientists I’m running for office,” Barthelemy said, “their eyes get wide, and they’re just like, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re doing that. I could never do that. Good luck!’”

Naughton said she sees a generational divide in how scientists react to their colleagues running for office. “Especially among the younger generation, there’s a strong appetite for getting involved in politics,” she said. Among the older generation of scientists, the feeling seemed to be “science is above politics, and therefore, scientists shouldn’t be involved in politics.”

There is some historical basis for that opinion. The U.S. public has not always looked kindly on scientists who have become the face of a scientific issue, whether willingly or not. Consider J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb or Michael Mann and climate change or Anthony Fauci and COVID-19. Scientists have seen many examples where politicians and the public have turned on outspoken colleagues, and some advise students to “stay in their lane,” Naughton said.

“That model has failed us,” Naughton continued, because whereas scientists may be hesitant to enter the political arena, “politicians are unembarrassed and unafraid to meddle in science.”

“Yes, it would be great if we could just be in our bubble doing our work,” Phoenix added, “but unfortunately, that is not the case.”

Entering the arena

Say you’re a scientist with an interest in politics and you care about a particular issue in your community. Is running for office necessarily the answer?

“I’m going to say, flatly, ‘no’ to all scientists,” Dewell said. “I would like to see more pure scientists in there… I would say they should run if they feel like they can make a difference” while remaining objective.

Whether or not a scientist should run for office “would depend on whether I felt that scientist was going to do a good job in the political arena,” said Samuel Bell, a planetary geologist at the Planetary Science Institute and a Rhode Island state senator. What drove Bell (D) into politics was a desire to see the Democratic party fight harder for science funding and use science-based decision-making to craft laws.

Scientists are not a monolith. A scientific background is no guarantee that a person would make a good legislator or be a good advocate for their community or for science. Instead of seeking to become policymakers, many scientists apply their expertise in advisory positions, working in government agencies, or through science advocacy groups to serve their communities. Being elected to office is not the only way a scientist can effect change.

What’s more, politics, just like geoscience, is a specialized field that requires specialized training. Such training programs exist, as do organizations like 314 Action that help scientists overcome barriers to entering politics.

Naughton urged scientists not to be discouraged by the challenges of running for office. “We are trying to normalize the idea of public service with science,” she said.

“There are ways to serve your community that don’t require giving up your career or taking a pay cut,” she continued. “A lot of municipal and even state legislative positions are part-time and are meant to be served part-time while you continue with your career.”

Larsen, too, encouraged scientists to participate more directly in politics. “If you’re not involved, you don’t have a voice,” he said. “Then we’re just leaving it to people who don’t understand science at all to make the decisions for science.”

Still, Bell feels that there’s a lot of overlap in what it takes to be a scientist and what it takes to be a politician. “Politics is very high stakes, just like the sciences, and it’s very competitive, just like sciences,” he said. Neither career pays the most or has the most job security. “It’s important for you to have the [conviction] in what you’re fighting for, in what’s right, the same way as in science,” he said.

But just as a scientist shouldn’t jump blithely into a new research area without doing a literature review, they should do their research before entering politics, Titone advised.

“Don’t set foot in city hall or the state house for the first time after you win an election,” she said. “You should set foot in those places well before that so you have an understanding of what the process is like, how people speak to each other, what some of the topics are, and how they cover them.”

“Then,” she added, “if you have a specific expertise on a specific topic, think about what things that you bring to the table that you can do to help solve some of the problems that are facing your area.”

Science in the governing chambers

But how does being a scientist actually help with being a lawmaker? For most geoscientists, their specific research topic is rarely, if ever, relevant.

Bell, who researches planetary impacts, joked that “there have not been major [impactors] that have struck the state of Rhode Island. And I really hope that that will continue to be the case!”

However, he recalled using his scientific expertise to advocate for a constituent whose home had been damaged by roadwork-driven seismicity. “The unique geology of the neighborhood in which she lived led to a much greater risk of seismic damage than would normally be the case,” he said.

Instead, scientists have found that the generalized skills developed when earning a science degree —critical thinking, asking tough questions, independent learning, collaboration, and teaching others — have served them the most when in office.

Larsen recalled that during his time as Nederland’s mayor, he ran on and spent time in office pushing for wildfire and climate resilience. These were issues in which, as a Mars researcher, he did not have direct scientific expertise but were critically important to the town’s residents. Larsen’s attention to those issues gained him recognition from Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign. He served briefly as a climate adviser for the campaign.

Bell, too, said that his general scientific training really helped him to understand issues specific to his constituency. His skills allowed him “to punch through and question a lot of the industry propaganda,” for example, when it came to the physics involved in a proposed expansion of a natural gas pipeline in Rhode Island.

A lot of the information about the pipeline was “quite shockingly wrong,” Bell said. “And when it’s dressed up in fancy language from official reports, a lot of people won’t know the difference between totally garbage science and reasonable science.” His research skills helped him ask industry representatives piercing questions, though ultimately, the pipeline expansion was approved.

After several years in office, Titone found that her analytical approach to science-related legislation led her to “really earn the trust of my colleagues because they know that I know technology. I know the lingo. I understand some of the nuance and math,” she said. “Those skills have really helped me explain to people something that’s complex in a way that they can understand it.”

In fact, being a generalist is critical when it comes to making science- and data-driven decisions.

“As senators, we’re called on to legislate on everything under the Sun,” U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), wrote in a statement to Eos. “We cover so much, so quickly, it helps to have some prior knowledge you bring to the table to understand the topics a little deeper.” Hickenlooper, a former geologist with a master’s degree in Earth and environmental sciences, is the only Earth scientist currently serving in the U.S. Senate.

“A facts-first approach is also something every senator should be using,” Hickenlooper wrote. “More scientists in government would help defuse the tensions and partisanship on many issues.”

But gathering facts and following logic are only the first steps to solving problems. Despite dreaming of purely science-based lawmaking, many scientists-turned-politicians have found that they need to balance other factors such as equity and cost when crafting even technical policies. A science-based solution to a problem might be cut and dry (for example, cutting carbon emissions to stop climate change); implementing that solution is often far from straightforward. Incremental progress is often more feasible, if a bit less palatable to a novice politician.

Public office is about doing what’s best for your community, Larsen said, and that means collaboration and cooperation, two critical skills for a scientist. “In mainstream news, politics is laid out as a very adversarial thing. It’s always red versus blue, right versus left. Pick your dichotomy,” he said. “But when you actually are in it and trying to get things done, it’s finding the compromise and finding the ways to do something that’s going to work for as many people as possible and make progress.”

“Fighting is the first thing I had to unlearn,” he added.

Eos repeatedly reached out to several GOP politicians with STEM backgrounds for this article but did not receive any replies.

Science’s champions

Though Barthelemy lost his June 25 primary challenge, he reflected that the process gave him a new stage to talk to people about STEM education, air quality in Salt Lake City, and the drying of the Great Salt Lake. Despite the election’s outcome, he found it to be a valuable experience.

“I think it’s critical to just even be part of the conversation so we can increase the discourse on the importance of science and also the importance of scientific literacy amongst the population,” Barthelemy said.

Regardless of your scientific background or political leanings, “when you get elected, you have to represent everyone, even the people who disagree with you,” Phoenix said. “And if you’re a scientist, that means people who think that what you work on is baloney.”

“Political parties are not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution,” Dewell noted. “Science is.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline From the lab to the legislature: STEM professionals run for political office on Oct 12, 2024.