Rep. Cori Bush, a progressive Democrat and one of Congress’ most vocal critics of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and its assaults on the Gaza Strip, lost her primary Tuesday night after a pro-Israel group spent millions attacking her and boosting her opponent, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.
Bush, who was seeking a third term for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, is the second of the progressive “squad” lawmakers in the House to lose a primary after pro-Israel groups poured money into their races.
More than $18 million was spent in Bush’s primary, almost $9 million of which came from the United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the pro-Israel group AIPAC. Earlier this week, Bush expressed her discontent with the outsize spending by external groups. “I’m just trying to make sense of why so much money would be spent in our congressional race when our district has so many needs,” she told NBC News.
In June, Rep. Jamaal Bowman also lost his New York primary to a moderate opponent backed by the United Democracy Project to the tune of almost $15 million. (My colleague Zeeshan Aleem wrote that Bowman had glaring vulnerabilities as a candidate, which the UDP successfully spotlighted.)
Bush’s race was the second-most expensive primary of the cycle, behind Bowman’s.
Bell will likely carry the deep-blue district in the general election. The prosecutor, who was initially running for Missouri’s seat in the U.S. Senate, abandoned that campaign in October to mount a primary challenge against Bush. On the campaign trail, he sought to draw a contrast between Bush’s position and his pro-Israel stance, and he pointed to her vote against the Biden infrastructure bill as an example of her failure to deliver results for her constituents. Bush’s “no” vote on the bill was part of a pressure campaign to expand the child tax credit and a slew of other programs in the bill that she said would benefit low-income families in her district.
Bush was also attacked over a Justice Department investigation into her use of campaign funds; she has denied wrongdoing and said she is cooperating with the probe.
Bush suggested that she won’t be leaving politics just yet. In her interview with NBC News this week, she pointed to her previous unsuccessful runs for Congress, saying, “One thing I don’t do is go away.”
