Meet the Nurses Running for Congress. Here’s What Their Campaigns Say About Nursing.

Part of Nurses on the Ballot, Nurse.org’s new research series tracking verified nurses running for office in 2026, starting with the eighteen on congressional ballots this November. Among them: four incumbents, ten challengers, four candidates in open seats, and the only Senate race in the country with two nurses in it.

Updated September 22, 2026: This article originally identified ten nurse candidates. Eight more have been verified and added, and the headline, tables, and counts reflect the expanded roster. Details in the update note at the bottom of this article.

Most of what shapes a nurse’s working life is decided by people who have never worked a shift. Congress sets VA nurse pay. Congress decides whether federal safe staffing legislation lives or dies, whether assaulting a healthcare worker becomes a federal crime, whether nursing schools get the funding to train the next generation.

We found and verified that at least eighteen of the people asking for those jobs on November’s midterm congressional ballot are nurses, ten identified in our original review and eight more verified after publication, several flagged by readers and even candidates themselves, each confirmed against state licensure records before being added. Turns out that identifying every actual candidate on a ballot, and the licensed nurses among them, is harder than it sounds. 

Ten are Democrats, four are Republicans, one is a Libertarian, one is an Independent American Party candidate, and two are independents. Sixteen are running for the US House and two for the US Senate, both in the same Oklahoma race.

Here’s who they are, what their campaigns actually say about nursing, and what they’ve raised.

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*Ratings from the Cook Political Report as of September 21, 2026; these are the raters’ assessments, not Nurse.org predictions.

Oklahoma’s Senate race is the only one in the country with two nurses in it, running against each other and everyone else: Thomas and Meinhardt appear among each other’s opponents above. We could find no record of a nurse ever serving in the United States Senate, and this year the only two we found on any Senate ballot share one race. Miller-Meeks began her career as an Army nurse and later became a physician; she’s here because this roster includes everyone with a verified nursing background on a federal ballot, from both parties, no exceptions.

One familiar name is not on the list. Jasmine Clark, a Democratic congressional nominee in Georgia, is a PhD microbiologist on the faculty of Emory’s nursing school, so she appears here as an adjacent figure rather than a roster entry.

Where the Nurse Candidates Stand on Nursing Issues

We reviewed what all eighteen campaigns publish on their own websites and checked each platform against seven nursing issues that matter to working nurses. A check means the campaign takes a specific position on that issue in what it has published.

A blank means the campaign has not put a position on that issue in writing on its website, not that the candidate opposes it or would vote against it. Campaign websites are choices about what to emphasize to voters, and that is what this grid shows: which nursing issues each campaign chose to run on.

The seven issues, and what counts as a position on each:

• Pay: what nurses are paid, including raising salaries or lifting pay caps.
• Staffing: safe staffing levels, nurse-to-patient ratios, or staffing requirements, in any care setting.
• Workplace violence: protecting nurses and other healthcare workers from violence on the job.
• Retention: keeping working nurses in the profession, or bringing them back to it.
• Burnout: support for nurse burnout, mental health, and well-being.
• Education funding: money for nursing schools, faculty, and training, including loan repayment tied to nursing education.
• Scope of practice: what advanced practice nurses, including NPs, CRNAs, nurse-midwives, and clinical nurse specialists, are authorized to do.

Which Nursing Issues Each Campaign Takes a Position On

From published platforms or positions stated directly to Nurse.org (marked †). House candidates appear alphabetically, then the Senate race.

• †Position stated directly to Nurse.org in response to our questions, held to the same definitions as platform content.
• *Kiggans’s platform says “qualified healthcare professionals” should practice to the full extent of their training; it does not name APRNs. Her staffing, scope, and burnout language also covers healthcare providers broadly, within her Congressional Nursing Caucus work, rather than naming nurses or APRNs specifically in a platform.
• ‖Knickerbocker’s platform mentions staffing but doesn’t take a position on it.
• ‡Miller-Meeks’s site publishes no nursing platform; her checks come from her response to Nurse.org, citing her cosponsorship of the Save Healthcare Workers Act (H.R. 3178) and the Dr. Lorna Breen Act reauthorization, measures covering healthcare providers broadly.
• §Meinhardt’s site invokes his RN background on healthcare reform; we found no specific positions on any of the seven issues as of September 18. Every check in his row comes from his direct response to Nurse.org. 

Three things stand out:

• Eight of the eighteen are on the record on at least one nursing issue: five in their published platforms (Kiggans, Berman, Lee, Thomas, and Pusczek) and three more, Miller-Meeks, Meinhardt, and Todd, in positions stated directly to Nurse.org, marked † in the grid. Pusczek is on the record both ways: her site commits to scope of practice, and in her answers to us she named nurse pay as her top priority. Underwood’s platform leans on her nursing identity without a specific nursing position. Staffing is the issue that shows up most, with six of the eighteen campaigns on the record. Berman’s is the fullest website platform, with positions on four of the seven issues; the fullest row overall belongs to Meinhardt, whose five positions all came directly to us. 
• Being a nurse doesn’t mean campaigning on nursing. Of the eighteen campaign sites, thirteen take no position on any of the seven issues we checked: four publish full platforms that say nothing about nursing; seven mention nursing or the healthcare workforce without taking a position; and two, Miller-Meeks and Meinhardt, are on the record through their answers to us, which is why every check in their rows carries a †. At the same time, nearly all eighteen lean on the credential itself: the “as a nurse” framing appears across these campaign sites. Some connect it to nursing policy. Some don’t.
• A campaign website isn’t the whole story. Underwood and Kiggans are both vice co-chairs of the Congressional Nursing Caucus, and Underwood co-led a law that raised VA nurse pay caps. Work like that lives mostly in the congressional record rather than on campaign pages, and this piece doesn’t measure it. What it measures is what each campaign chooses to say to voters, which is worth knowing on its own terms.

One more thing worth knowing: campaign websites change. One campaign added nursing content to its site after we asked for the campaign’s positions. Everything in this piece reflects each site as it stood on the date we reviewed it.

Campaign Fundraising: Nurse Candidates vs. Their Opponents

Every figure below comes from FEC filings, and they cover the same period, through June 30, 2026, with one exception stated in the table notes.

Table notes: Ratio is the nurse’s total divided by the top opponent’s, rounded; 1.0x means roughly even, and below 1.0x the opponent has raised more. Figures are cycle totals through June 30, 2026. Lamb’s most recent filing runs through July 1 instead of June 30. Oklahoma appears twice because both nurses face the same top opponent. The table pairs each nurse with the race’s top-raising opponent; other candidates, including those without reported figures or FEC committees on file, are omitted here. We found no FEC filings for Kamerath and Ballay, which federal law permits below the $5,000 activity threshold; Neville has registered a campaign committee, but we found no financial report filed as of our review. Full figures for every filer, including disbursements and cash on hand, are in the database.

Two of these numbers tell bigger stories:

• Iowa’s 1st is a genuine money fight. Miller-Meeks and Bohannan have raised nearly the same amount, but Bohannan enters the fall with more cash in the bank, $5.4 million to $4.7 million, because she has spent about $1.16 million less.
• The Oklahoma Senate race is the biggest mismatch on the list, twice over. The only two nurses running for the US Senate anywhere in the country are both in it: Thomas reported $254.02 in cash on hand at the end of June, and Meinhardt has raised $8,713. The opponent they share has raised $9.95 million, though nearly $3 million of that was transferred from committees he built for his House races rather than raised for this one.

What the Nurse Candidates Told Us

Before publishing, we sent every campaign the same request: review what we found, and tell nurses anything you want them to know.

• Thomas gave the fullest response. She told Nurse.org she holds an active Oklahoma LPN license, earned after Oklahoma reviewed the nursing coursework she completed in an associate degree program she was unable to finish, an experience she says shaped her top priority: strengthening the nursing workforce pipeline through accountability and support. “We cannot solve the nursing workforce shortage while ignoring the barriers that prevent qualified students from reaching the bedside,” she told Nurse.org. It is a priority our seven issues do not fully capture, and a useful reminder that no grid sees everything a nurse candidate cares about.
• Miller-Meeks’s campaign confirmed her nursing background in detail: a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Texas Christian University in 1976 and roughly six years as an Army nurse before medical school; in a 24-year Army career, she finished as a lieutenant colonel. It also confirmed what our review found: her campaign site “does not currently have a standalone nursing policy platform,” and pointed us instead to her congressional record, citing her cosponsorship of the Save Health Care Workers Act (H.R. 3178), which would create federal criminal penalties for assaults on hospital personnel, and the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Reauthorization Act (H.R. 929) on healthcare worker well-being, both issues that map to our grid, addressed through legislation rather than campaign copy. Her campaign told Nurse.org she “views protecting the health care workforce and ensuring patients can access quality care, particularly in rural communities, as important priorities.”
• Meinhardt was verified and added to this roster on September 14, after the other nine campaigns had been contacted; we sent his campaign the same questions that day, acknowledged our note arrived later than the others’, and granted an extension. He then answered every one of the seven issue questions, the same candidate whose website takes no position on any of the seven issues, which makes his response to this piece’s argument: a blank is not a verdict. He told Nurse.org he holds an RN and BSN from Columbia Union College and began an MSN with a health policy emphasis at Liberty University before the policy side won out and he switched to a master’s in public policy. On the ballot as an independent after seeking the Republican nomination in June, he described himself as a “Conservative Independent,” still personally registered Republican but running unaffiliated over what he called the “detrimental effects of hyper-partisanship in the overall electoral process.” His answers ran from pay (“The scarcity of nurses demands salary commensurate with the stress loads and inherent risks of the profession”) to workplace violence, where he wrote from his own operating room years: “I’ve seen how some surgeons treat nurses, with complete disrespect and even violent tantrums. This needs to stop. This kind of behavior leads to workplace burnout and attrition.” On scope of practice, he reached back a century, arguing that “the longstanding artificial scarcity of medical practitioners post Flexner (1910)” drives costs and that “expanding practice roles among the nursing profession would go a long way in offsetting this problem.” On education funding, he backed expanding paid hospital externships to cut student debt, crediting the two he completed in nursing school.
• Lee, who campaigns as “Nurse Lee,” responded quickly and put staffing first. “Safe staffing is a key driver in ensuring patient safety and in protecting our nursing workforce from burnout or leaving the profession altogether,” she told Nurse.org. “To get there, we need to adopt non-negotiable staffing ratios that are evidence-based and unit-specific.” She called nursing workforce development “a key factor in the future of healthcare in this country.”

The candidates added in this update received the same seven questions, and their answers will be added as received:

• Pusczek answered quickly: she named “fair compensation as her top priority,” telling Nurse.org that ” adequate pay can also improve access to mental health care, support staff retention, and help reduce burnout. When nurses are living paycheck to paycheck, prioritizing self-care can be difficult. Easing the financial burden nurses currently face can have a direct impact on patient care, workplace well-being, and overall job satisfaction.” Her campaign also reviewed and confirmed our reading of her website.

• Todd answered every question through her campaign, and her priority is the one she lived: “When I first became a nurse in 1994, I worked the night shift on an orthopedic unit. It was a 34-bed unit split between two RNs,” she told Nurse.org, describing ICU shifts where she had three critically ill patients on ventilators at once. “I needed safe staffing then, and I want to ensure nurses don’t have to go through the same situations I did.” Her answer is federal: “setting national staffing regulations can help keep them in the profession.” She also called for investing in nursing schools, faculty, and students, and for the Department of Education to “shift back to seeing Nursing as the true profession it is.”

Not every campaign responded before publication. Those that engaged are quoted and marked in the grid above; Meinhardt answered every question, and Lee put staffing first. Since publication, the engagement has grown: Pusczek answered the same day she was contacted, Todd’s campaign answered every question, Ballay wrote to us about why she’s running, Neville completed verification the same evening she was reached, and the Mannion campaign has been in touch as well. We sent every one of the eighteen campaigns the same questions, we grant an extension to every campaign that asks, and we update this article as responses arrive. 

Whoever wins these midterm races will spend the next term voting on the things this piece measures: what VA nurses are paid, whether staffing legislation moves, whether the people who care for patients are protected at work. At least eighteen of the people asking for those votes have worked as nurses. Their platforms, their answers, and their fundraising are all above. What to make of them is up to you.

And the federal ten are the smallest part of the story. This November, 118 nurses are running for state legislatures across 39 states, nearly evenly split between the parties, a count now final after the last primary in the country. That verified full state roster is here.

Election Day is November 3.

More From Nurses on the Ballot

🤔 What would change for your patients if more nurses held office? Tell us in the comments below.

We confirmed every candidate is on the November ballot using official post-primary sources. We stated each person’s nursing background the way official records, legislature biographies, or the candidates’ own materials state it, and we applied one rule to everyone: every verified nurse on a federal general-election ballot is included, all parties and independent lines, no screening.

For the platform readings, we reviewed each campaign’s own website, every issues page and linked policy page, on a recorded date. We did not grade voting records, committee work, ads, or speeches. A checkmark means the campaign takes a specific position on that issue in its published platform; a mention without a position doesn’t count. All platform coding was performed by the Nurse.org editorial team, with every coding re-verified against live source pages between September 12 and September 22, 2026.

Ratings from the Cook Political Report as of September 21, 2026; these are the raters’ assessments, not Nurse.org predictions.

Fundraising totals come from FEC filings with verified coverage dates ending June 30, 2026, with one exception we disclose: one filing runs one day longer. Where a candidate has no FEC committee, we say so rather than reporting zero.

Update and correction (September 22, 2026): This article, originally published September 21, identified ten verified nurse candidates. A post-publication review found eight more, each verified against state licensure records before being added; the headline, tables, and counts have been updated. An earlier version also rated Wisconsin’s 1st District race Safe Republican; Cook has rated it Likely Republican, and the ratings column was corrected. Additional candidates remain under review.

We looked hard, but no roster like this can ever be proven complete. If we missed a nurse on a federal ballot, tell us; we will verify and add them. The full methodology for the project, including how we verified all 118 nurses running for state legislatures, runs with the companion piece.

Nurse.org Analysis