Kennedy's Lyme Disease Stop Casts A Long Shadow Toward 2028

By Damien Fisher, NH Journal

There’s nothing unusual in American politics to talk about sneaky bloodsuckers who want to live off unsuspecting Granite Staters, but in Concord on Friday, the topic was more than a metaphor.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a press conference to announce millions of federal dollars to fight Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. New Hampshire has one of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the country, and tick bite cases exploded this spring.

“One of the real tragedies is Americans can’t go in the woods safely anymore,” Kennedy said. “It’s a science fiction nightmare we now live in.”

Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” tour stopped at the State House to commemorate the end of Lyme Disease Awareness Month. It’s an issue Kennedy takes seriously. Kennedy, his six children, and his former wife were also diagnosed with Lyme. One of his sons suffered from facial paralysis for a year, he said. Millions of Americans deal with daily pain and debilitating symptoms caused by Lyme. Kennedy wants to do better for those people.

“They deserve better prevention, better treatments, and real support,” he said. “Americans deserve an answer. They deserve gold-standard science, and a health care system that treats suffering seriously.”

Kennedy announced a federal initiative to find more accurate Lyme disease tests, as well as other programs to halt the spread of the disease, and get people diagnosed with better medical care.

Kennedy was flanked by House Speaker Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry), Senate President Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry), and House Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R-Auburn), as well as Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, director of National Health Communications for the Office of the Surgeon General, HHS Chief Data Officer Dr. Kristen Honey, and local celebrity Sophia Sargent, a radio host, 2025 Miss Greater Hooksett, and a Lyme survivor.

“Trying to manage Lyme disease while launching my career in social media felt like racing in the Daytona 500 in a minivan. Everyone around me was moving fast, and I was just trying not to crash,” Sargent said.

While Lyme disease is a serious problem in New Hampshire, and Kennedy seems to want to make a difference against the illness, any Granite State political event by a major player in President Donald Trump’s administration is shadowed by the 2028 primary.

Kennedy waged an independent race for the White House in 2024 — a race he first telegraphed to NHJournal in March 2023 — before dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump. So it was perhaps no surprise that when a Kennedy came to New Hampshire, he brought national media attention and political buzz along with him.

Kennedy’s politics tend to be a mixture of fringe science, nontraditional medical advice, and podcast bro-ready sound bites. But thanks to his loyal MAHA following, he could be a wild card in any GOP presidential contest.

Thus far, however, Kennedy has poured cold water on the idea. On May 7, he told KFF Health News, “No, I’m not going to run.”

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.