Many longtime locals still carry the ethos of the ’60s counterculture — Deadheads and old-school activists who never stopped questioning authority. They fought smart meters over concerns about electromagnetic radiation and continue to resist the rollout of 5G cellular networks, citing fears over constant exposure to higher frequency signals.
Here, being “natural” isn’t just a health choice — it’s a worldview. The ground, presumably pesticide-free, was tilled and ready for Kennedy’s platform to take root.
“Regulars at public meetings accused us of knowingly harming people with vaccines,” said Matthew Willis, who served as Marin County’s public health officer throughout the pandemic. “They hung banners over Highway 101 calling for me to be locked up.”
Last summer, when supporters led a Kennedy float through the Fairfax Festival parade, Willis felt the need to hide his family as it passed by. “I wasn’t sure what would happen if they saw us.”
Willis retired at the end of the summer and is still grappling with how quickly the movement gained ground. “I didn’t see all the ways this group was tied to a much stronger national thread, or that the leader of that movement would be put in charge of our entire national health and science system,” he said.
Dr. Matt Willis, former Marin County Public Health Officer, poses for a portrait in San Anselmo on May 15, 2025. After serving as the county’s health official from 2013 to 2024, Willis retired in September 2024 and now focuses on climate health and public health communication initiatives. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
As head of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has instilled his own ideology into federal policy. In his first months in office, he launched a controversial autism inquiry focused on environmental causes, cast doubt on bird flu vaccines, condemned the sale of ultra-processed food on Native American reservations as a form of genocide, proposed deep budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health and terminated thousands of federal health workers.
And on Tuesday, Kennedy announced that the CDC would no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women.
Critics say his approach could weaken the institutions that prevent disease and respond to health emergencies. However, for supporters like Nathanial Lepp, a family physician and addiction specialist in Fairfax, Kennedy’s early actions are a long-overdue reckoning with the public health system.
“I think he’s directionally correct,” Lepp, 40, said. “Even if he doesn’t always get the details right, he’s asking the question nobody else is asking: Why are we so sick?”
Lepp’s work experience shaped his worldview. During his residency at a safety-net hospital in Salinas, he had a front-row seat to the opioid crisis. He saw patients harmed not by a lack of care, but by the care itself — from overprescribed painkillers to long-term dependence on psychiatric medications.
One patient in his 60s arrived in the ER disoriented and unable to hold a conversation.
Small businesses, cafes, and independent shops line the streets of downtown Fairfax in Marin County on May 15, 2025. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
“Everyone thought he had dementia,” Lepp said. When tests came back normal, doctors gradually weaned him off a benzodiazepine, a nervous system depressant commonly used to treat insomnia, anxiety and seizures. Over the next three months, the fog lifted. “His symptoms were gone.”
Lepp now works with patients to taper off medications that may be doing more harm than good. He said Kennedy is one of the few public figures willing to confront the uncomfortable possibility that medicine itself is part of the problem.
Politically, Lepp long considered himself far-left — protesting the Iraq War and supporting progressive presidential candidates like Ralph Nader and Howard Dean. But over time, he grew disillusioned with a system he saw as more focused on preserving the status quo than delivering real reform.
When Democrats consolidated around Joe Biden in 2020, sidelining Sen. Bernie Sanders, he felt his views confirmed. “They were terrible at governing and consistently blocked more populist voices,” Lepp said.
Kennedy, he claimed, is the first national figure in years who seems willing to question the system itself — not just “tinker around the edges.”
Martin Kaufman sits at a parklet in downtown Fairfax, Marin County, on May 15, 2025. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Martin Kaufman, a 41-year-old cannabis entrepreneur in Fairfax, doesn’t trust much anymore — not public health agencies, not politicians, not the media. He once leaned left, drawn to causes like cannabis legalization and environmental protection. He said his faith in the government gave way to deep cynicism. “I just look at what politicians actually accomplish,” he said. “Most of them? Nothing.”
After his second COVID-19 shot, Kaufman said he developed symptoms consistent with cerebral encephalitis — severe headaches, brain fog and cognitive issues that lingered for months. During his recovery, a friend gave him a copy of Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, which public health officials have widely criticized for promoting conspiracy theories, including claims that vaccines are tools of population control and that the pandemic was engineered to benefit pharmaceutical companies.
“He wants to study vaccines in a way that hasn’t been allowed for decades,” Kaufman said. “Maybe we find out they’re totally safe. Maybe not. Either way, at least we’ll know. That alone is a public service.”
Scientists argue that Kennedy’s push to “study vaccines” misrepresents the state of existing research. Dozens of large-scale studies found vaccines to be overwhelmingly safe and effective. Still, for some voters, Kennedy’s outsider stance makes him compelling.
“None of this stuff even mattered to me until RFK started talking about it,” said Zadie Dressler, a 56-year-old nurse in Petaluma, one of several North Bay cities where Kennedy’s message has caught on. “He’s asking why so many kids have asthma, autism and obesity.”
A local artist sells jewelry in front of Good Earth Natural Foods in Fairfax, Marin County, on May 15, 2025. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Dressler said she received the first two COVID shots despite feeling hesitant. Months later, she experienced chest pain, tachycardia and fatigue, symptoms she now attributes to the vaccine. Around that time, Kennedy’s videos showed up in her social media feeds. “Everything he said — it felt like the truth,” she said.
Many of Kennedy’s supporters said the same thing — that they didn’t hear his ideas from doctors or the news, but through posts shared online.
“He’s not just talking — he’s living it,” Dressler said. “He wants to get to the root of the problem, not just throw more drugs at everything.”
Dressler’s sentiment has rippled out across the north bay. For a while, it was just a folding table, a stack of flyers and a few diehard volunteers at the Fairfax farmers market. But the message — medical freedom, skepticism of government, distrust in public health — caught on. A town once positioned outside the mainstream now feels oddly in step with a national zeitgeist.
“I think Fairfax thinks it’s unique,” Cutrano said. “The same story is playing out all across the U.S.”
