Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, encountered little pushback from Republican lawmakers on Tuesday as he sought to smooth over controversy from his record as an anti-vaccine activist who has supported abortion access.
Plodding through some of the more than 20 meetings he had scheduled with senators this week, many of them receptive to his case to run the Health and Human Services Department, Mr. Kennedy told reporters that his sessions had been “really productive, really good.”
Four of the lawmakers Mr. Kennedy met with Tuesday — Senator Steve Daines of Montana, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas — quickly put out supportive statements after their meetings.
Their comments reflected the fall-in-line dynamic among Republicans that other controversial selections of Mr. Trump’s, such as Kash Patel, his choice for F.B.I. director, have found on their trips to Capitol Hill.
Mr. Marshall, a physician, wrote on social media after meeting Mr. Kennedy that he supported “many of his goals, including Making America Healthy Again.” And Mr. Tuberville, who has criticized federal Covid vaccine policy, said Mr. Kennedy was the “right man” to “bring transparency to vaccines.”
Mr. Kennedy has mostly declined this week to speak with reporters, who have asked him about whether he supports the use of the polio vaccine. The New York Times reported last week that a lawyer working with him to vet potential federal health appointees had petitioned the federal government to revoke its approval for the shot.
Mr. Kennedy, who has expressed views about the polio vaccine at odds with the medical consensus, told reporters on Monday that he was “all for” the vaccine, hours after Mr. Trump came to his defense. At a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Mr. Trump told reporters that Mr. Kennedy was “much less radical than you would think.”
“I think he’s got a very open mind or I wouldn’t have put him there,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Kennedy has voiced a range of conspiratorial ideas about health, medicine and other topics. He has promoted theories suggesting H.I.V. is not the true cause of AIDS, and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance. He has said that the coronavirus was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy has generated significant backlash in the public health community, including among vaccine experts who have clashed with him over the safety of inoculations. More than 75 Nobel Prize winners signed a letter urging senators not to confirm him.
Protect Our Care, a progressive advocacy group, started an advertising campaign on Monday against Mr. Kennedy, in part targeting Republican senators who may be more skeptical of him.
Mr. Kennedy has also received support from some health experts, including a group of around 800 medical professionals who signed a letter organized by MAHA Action, a nonprofit group supporting Mr. Kennedy.
There were signs this week that Mr. Kennedy was working to align himself with, or at least accommodate, anti-abortion Republicans, after former Vice President Mike Pence called on Republican senators to reject Mr. Kennedy over his past support for abortion rights.
Mr. Kennedy said during his presidential campaign that abortion should be unrestricted until “the baby is viable outside the womb,” and that he would “allow appropriate restrictions on abortion in the final months of pregnancy.”
Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who met with Mr. Kennedy on Monday, said that Mr. Kennedy had promised to “support the Trump pro-life agenda.” Mr. Tuberville, the Alabama senator, said that Mr. Kennedy had told him that on abortion, he would support Mr. Trump’s position “100 percent.”
And Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also met with Mr. Kennedy on Monday, noted that he had discussed “preventing taxpayer-funded abortion” with Mr. Kennedy. But Mr. Scott declined to endorse him, a sign that Mr. Kennedy may have to do more to persuade different factions of the Republican conference.
“President Trump won a sweeping victory and should have the latitude to choose the cabinet he feels will best serve the American people,” Mr. Scott said. “I look forward to learning more and further considering his nomination during his upcoming confirmation hearing.”
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