California Doctor Turns Congressional Candidate After Facing Anti-Vax Hate and Assaults

Dr. Richard Pan is no stranger to blood—literally. As a pediatrician, he was trained to handle its inevitability. Yet, despite his approachable and buoyant demeanor, he has faced extreme hostility: menstrual blood thrown at him during protests, a street assault livestreamed on Facebook, racist memes comparing him to Asian despots, and t-shirts depicting his face smeared with blood. Death threats have also been part of his reality.

So why the hate? Much of it stems from his role in authoring some of the nation’s strongest vaccine laws while serving as a California state senator. In 2015, Pan introduced legislation that removed the ability of parents to use “personal beliefs” to exempt their children from routine immunizations required for public school enrollment. Four years later, he authored a bill targeting fraudulent medical exemptions for vaccines, which passed despite protesters’ attempts to disrupt the Legislature.

“They brought the militia to the capital,” Pan recalls. “I like to say I met RFK Jr. twice. I debated him twice. I beat him both times.”

“When we came out of the hearing room, I was shaken by the level of vitriol, and I was almost in tears—but Dr. Pan was so calm.”

Leah Russin, a parent who collaborated with Pan to support the 2015 bill, witnessed the escalating hostility firsthand. Opponents, many of whom described their children as “vaccine-injured,” were bused in from across the state to address lawmakers in Sacramento. As anti-vax activists shouted into microphones and religious leaders invoked imprecatory prayers, Pan remained composed.

“It was like the ocean lapping against a wall without eroding it at all,” Russin remembers. The protests intensified in 2019, culminating in blood throwing and a physical assault.

“It was the roots of what we now call the MAHA movement,” Russin says, and Pan endured their “crucible.”

Now 60, with dark hair peppered with gray, Pan dressed casually in a crisp blue Oxford shirt for our interview. He admits he’s never been overly affected by the vitriol: “When you resort to violence, then I think you’ve already admitted you’ve lost the argument.”

After serving four years in the California Assembly and 12 in the state Senate, Pan termed out and returned to teaching at UC Davis School of Medicine. However, the rise of the vehemently anti-vaccine Make America Healthy (MAHA) movement—and its controversial figurehead, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has drawn him back into politics. His résumé, unflappability, and deep knowledge of vaccine science and its detractors position him uniquely to counter the anti-vax movement.