A Squad member could lose tonight in Missouri's 1st
Perhaps no district in the country has seen more political activism in the past decade than Missouri's 1st District. In 2020, on her second try, now-Rep. Cori Bush — a progressive activist who first rose to prominence in the 2014 Ferguson protests in this district — defeated an entrenched incumbent representative in the Democratic primary in this safely blue seat, and she instantly made a name for herself as an activist legislator in Congress.
But her contrarianism — for example, she was one of just six Democrats to vote against President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill — has rubbed many the wrong way. It doesn't help, too, that the Department of Justice is investigating her for paying her husband for personal security services out of her campaign's bank account. As a result, Bush is now facing a serious primary challenge of her own from St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.
Like Bush, Bell was first elected as a progressive in the wake of the Ferguson protests, but in this race he has inevitably become associated with the centrist and conservative donors and groups backing his campaign — most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC's super PAC has spent a whopping $8.4 million either supporting Bell or opposing Bush, who has been one of Israel's loudest critics in Congress over its conduct in the war against Hamas.
All told, pro-Bell groups have outspent pro-Bush groups $12.1 million to $2.9 million, according to OpenSecrets, and Bell's actual campaign has outraised Bush's $4.8 million to $2.9 million as well. But with all the advantages of incumbency as well as plenty of local endorsements, Bush will not be easy to defeat. A July 21-24 poll conducted by the Mellman Group/Democratic Majority for Israel gave Bell 48 percent support and Bush 42 percent, but since DMFI supports Bell and internal polls usually overestimate their preferred candidate's support, that implies the two candidates are neck-and-neck.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
