Recently, I heard a rumor that a friend of mine from college was running for Congress—the kind of genuine, warm, do-gooder, wonky, brilliant, funny-as-shit, humble, down-to-earth, public health expert with a PhD in science I would have never imagined, in a million years, would ever run for Congress. Even if right now, good lord, we desperately need someone like her looking out for our best interests. (See: RFK Jr., the dismantling of Roe, a measles outbreak, and [waves hands around] literally everything else.)
I immediately stalked her Instagram grid, wondering if I would even find one.
“I’m Nina Schwalbe, and I’m running for Congress, and I’m everything Donald Trump warned you about,” she said.
“Yes!” I yelled out, with a fist pump, to no one in particular. “Nina! Nina Schwalbe! Holy shit!”
The post went on: “I’m a lesbian mom, I actually care about people’s pronouns and preserving women’s bodily autonomy. Not only do I believe in science, but I’m a real live scientist! And not only do I believe in vaccines, but I’ve distributed over a billion vaccines around the world…” Yup, there she was. The same old Nina I knew, loved, and admired in college. She even looked the same and took the opportunity to joke about it: “I don’t know what to do with my hair, and, more importantly, I don’t give a crap.”
Oh my god, I thought. Nina frigging Schwalbe (on here as Nina Schwalbe, MPH, PhD) is running for Congress. I actually teared up imagining her sitting in our Capitol passing laws that are science-forward instead of science-back-to-the-dark-ages.
I immediately got in touch with her and arranged a Zoom. I had to find out why, at 59, she would willingly place herself in that sulphurous swamp. But also? I was proud of her and thrilled to hear she actually wanted to take on this job and corrupt administration. Because I literally cannot imagine a better person than Nina to help improve American laws, health, and lives from within. Especially for those of us whose bodies, of late, have been used as political pawns instead of as human organisms worthy of life-saving healthcare and bodily autonomy.
You can hear our entire Zoom conversation above, and I urge you to get to know her through her own words, but for those of you who need the TLDR, here’s the basic outline:
In early 2020, at the start of Covid, Nina’s father was dying of the virus and unable to get the care he desperately needed. “I took care of him by myself,” she told me. “And we didn’t have any medicines, no palliative care, no oxygen. And all he had when he died was me knowing that he wouldn’t die alone.”
Nina—whose entire four-decade career has been in the service of averting public healthcare disasters such as the one that killed her father and 45,000 other denizens of New York City—was livid. How could this have happened?
“Cuomo had a huge stock of ventilators!” she said. “And [he] wouldn't send them to the city.”
That’s when it struck her: she could know everything there is to know about public health, women’s reproductive health, vaccines, and how to keep the citizens of our country and all countries around the world safe, but unless those who are in power and hold the purse strings actually act on that knowledge; pass laws to preserve lives and prevent future disasters; and allocate money, supplies, and healthcare workers to do so when needed, all of that knowledge she’s accumulated over her four decades in public health won’t change a thing about how America actually operates, either on a day-to-day level our during the next pandemic. And therefore American citizens will continue to needlessly suffer and die. Like her father.
When she heard Jerry Nadler’s seat in her district, New York’s 12th, was up for grabs—she’s a sixth generation New Yorker, born and bred—Nina made a decision that not many with her background and credentials would make: she would run for Congress.
As of now, there are currently ten candidates vying for Nadler’s spot, so the issue for my friend in the short term is clear: get her name and experience out there so people know who she is and what she stands for. This is not easy when the local paper of record has thus far featured only the men running for Congress, not the women. (Don’t get me started.) These featured men include Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s Millennial grandson, who is famous mostly for being wacky and weird on social media; and George Conway, a former Trump-supporter, former member of the Federalist Society, and former spouse of professional liar Kellyanne Conway, who recently switched teams and moved to New York to make his own run for Congress.
In the short term, if Nina’s elected, she told me, the first thing she will do is to restore the CDC. “There is something called a level five lab in the CDC,” she said. “That’s where they keep all the really scary pathogens, like smallpox. That is not staffed right now. They fired all the staff in the level five lab. They fired the measles department. They fired the tuberculosis department. So I think we really need to get on that.” She will also wear a T-shirt, on day one, that says, “Impeach RFK Jr.”
Long term, she would like to be the voice of scientific reason in a political body woefully short on it.
Unfortunately, I live in Brooklyn, so I can’t vote for Nina, but if I could, I would, and I will urge any of you who live in Manhattan’s 12th district to take a good look at the experience and background of these candidates and understand what’s at stake. Do you want the Instagram influencer endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, before she ever met any of the other candidates, simply because he’s the grandson of JFK? Do you want a former Trump operative and card-carrying Federalist Society member who was once married to a woman whose job it was to lie to the American public?
I know I don’t want any of that. And I have a good hunch some of you, given your subscription to this particular publication, might not either.
So here’s my public endorsement, for whatever it’s worth, to the fourteen thousand readers of Ladyparts: Nina Schwalbe, of all of the ten candidates currently running for Nadler’s seat, has the grit, experience, honesty, and no-fucks-given humility to make actual and meaningful changes to the way our government approaches not only health and healthcare in America but also in how we treat all of our citizens fairly, equitably, and with the scientific data to back up every one of those decisions, policies, and laws. Given the difficulty of Nina getting noticed in such a large field of candidates—two of them with dubious name brands—I will ask only this: if you are in a position to do so, please help spread the word about her candidacy. Follow her Instagram. Share her videos. Donate to Nina’s war chest. Or just cheer her on, as I will, from the sidelines as loudly and proudly as possible. I’ve known Nina now for 42 years, ever since we were freshmen in college. I can honestly say she’s the exact same Nina I knew back in 1984, and that is someone who doesn’t care what you think about her hair, her image, her clothes, or her lack of media training or savvy: she just wants to get shit done and do good in the world. And she has—and has always had, for as long as I’ve known her—the brains, humanity, morality, love, grit, kindness, and perseverance to do both.
