TOLEDO, Ohio — The little boy, dressed in a Toy Story sweatshirt, wrapped himself around the nation’s health secretary.
“What do you guys want to be when you grow up?” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked a carpet full of preschoolers.
“A dinosaur!” the boy replied, squeezing tighter.
Just weeks ago, Kennedy sat before lawmakers on Capitol Hill and faced intense questions about a dangerous uptick in infectious diseases among American children.
Now, with midterm primaries underway, Kennedy was seated in a toddler-sized chair in Ohio, on a mission to change the subject.
Advised to stay away from the anti-vaccine rhetoric that rocketed him to political stardom, Kennedy has been dispatched by the White House to evangelize about the least controversial — and most popular — parts of his agenda. Republicans hope Kennedy’s “Take Back Your Health” tour will help them hang on to voters, many of whom are deeply unhappy with President Donald Trump.
So there Kennedy was in early May, crisscrossing a strip of northern Ohio that includes one of the few congressional districts that Republicans are confident they can flip in November, rotating through a wardrobe of blue suits and blue jeans.
He inspected the kitchen of a Toledo daycare center, where hundreds of the city’s tiniest residents learn and play through the federally funded Head Start program. Under the careful watch of a surgeon, he briefly operated the renowned Cleveland Clinic’s robotic hands on a live patient splayed …