Is Romney Using Lyme Disease to Win Swing State Votes?
The mailers arrived in late September, courtesy of the Romney campaign—glossy and full-color, with a photo of a smiling doctor easing the concerns of a middle-aged white couple. Inside was a promise: “Romney and Ryan will do more to fight the spread of Lyme disease.” It rattled off a list of steps the Republican ticket would take to thwart a “massive epidemic,” and promised to protect doctors from malpractice cases.
The initial response from political observers was bemusement, followed by derision. As the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein put it, “We may look back at this as epitomizing the smallness of the Romney campaign.”
But from his perch in the exurbs of Northern Virginia, Michael Farris knew better. Romney wasn’t just microtargeting about microbes; he’d taken a side in one of the most contentious debates in American medicine—a heated dispute complete with anti-trust investigations, congressional hearings, and allegations of criminal malpractice on both sides. “I’ve worked in AIDS and other infectious diseases,” says Dr. Gary Wormser, lead author of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s 2006 guidelines on Lyme. “I’ve never seen anything like Lyme disease.”
Few people have done more to fan those flames than Farris, a homeschooling advocate, constitutional lawyer, and evangelical powerbroker who founded the arch-conservative Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia 12 years ago to prepare Christian homeschoolers for careers in politics.
“In Western Loudoun County, it’s almost 100 percent of families that have been touched by Lyme disease,” Farris says when we meet in his office in early October, offering up a figure he concedes is based on speculation. “Who’s gonna win Virginia? Loudoun’s gonna be the bellwether. You change five, six, seven percent of the vote, that’s a big deal in the presidential race.”
If Farris is right, the GOP may have struck electoral gold with the unlikeliest of strategies. But in his rush to court swing state voters, is Romney playing politics with public health? (The Romney campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)
