Reactionary forces like AIPAC who want more death and misery in Gaza are going up against Rep. Cori Bush. Her reelection is a priority for progressive forces everywhere.
US representative Cori Bush makes a speech at a pro-Palestine rally in Washington, DC, on April 20, 2024. (Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Up until now, despite billions of dollars and unmeasurable institutional power on its side, the ruling class has struggled to unseat the Squad, the bloc of eight democratic socialists and progressives in Congress elected in the wake of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign, a group of movement leaders who have helped elevate the concept of democratic socialism from a personal eccentricity of one gruffly lovable Vermont grandfather to a central tenet of millennial and Gen Z left movements. Indeed, until last month, no challenge — Republican or Democrat — to the Squad had been successful.
But the group’s strong support for a cease-fire in Gaza has activated the big money of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel groups, and in June, for the first time, a Squad member lost his race. Jamaal Bowman, even with Jewish Voice for Peace, Justice Democrats, Democratic Socialists of America, and other left groups phone banking and door knocking for him, was unable to prevail against an opponent backed by more than $14 million in AIPAC funds. (Bowman’s opponents also needed a redistricting that was highly in their favor, icing out much of Bowman’s natural working-class constituency in favor of a richer, more suburban one.)
Now it’s possible the Squad may lose another member to the same pro-genocide money machine: Rep. Cori Bush, a nurse, Black Lives Matter activist, socialist, and fighter for the working class.
During Bush’s time in Congress, she has pursued a strong progressive agenda on renewable energy, climate resilience, public transit, environmental justice, veterans’ health, and women’s rights. Like her fellow Squad members, Bush has elevated left and working-class concerns in national political discourse and pushed the Democrats left, strengthening legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.
Along with the rest of the Squad, Bush has stood against the war on Gaza. Bush boycotted Benjamin Netanyahu’s horrific speech to Congress on Wednesday; she authored a cease-fire resolution and called for the United States to stop funding Israeli crimes, deeming it “unconscionable for the United States government to continue enabling mass atrocities.” She has framed such calls not only in the context of empathy for a people under siege but also of American working-class well-being: “We should be prioritizing the needs of our communities. That means funding public housing, healthcare and education — not endless war.”
Strong stances like these attracted AIPAC to her race; calls for human flourishing rather than bloody misery don’t go unchallenged by the group. Wesley Bell, Bush’s opponent and St. Louis County district attorney (DA), was polling at least seventeen points behind her in the race’s early days. Now, with AIPAC and related group pouring millions into Bell’s campaign — including $2.5 million on ads alone — the race was neck and neck last month, and some conservative media outlets have recently reported a significant lead for Bell.
Bush is a strong left-wing congresswoman up against purveyors of death and right-wing reaction. With potentially some 186,000 dead in Gaza, and American workers under threat from false friends like J. D. Vance and Donald Trump, a socialist, antiwar nurse like Cori Bush in Congress is vital.
But Bush’s opponent is also grim. Despite running in a Democratic primary, Bell is friendly with Republicans. He served as campaign manager to a Republican friend with antiabortion politics, and like Jamaal Bowman’s opponent, George Latimer, Bell has has taken donations from Republicans like hedge-funder Daniel Loeb.
As prosecutor of St. Louis County, the site of Michael Brown’s 2014 murder, Bell opted not to prosecute Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Brown — a move that sparked mass demonstrations all over the country.
Bell hasn’t changed much since. A report on his tenure released last week by Prosecutor Watch, a coalition of St. Louis racial justice groups including Forward Through Ferguson and Action St. Louis, shows that the jail population has not been reduced during his tenure as prosecutor, and transparency from the DA’s office is still lacking. Even before assuming his current office, as municipal judge of Velda City, Bell was sued for presiding over a fixed cash bail system that was alleged to be abusive to impoverished defendants.
Bell was originally going to challenge Republican senator Josh Hawley, a fight that could have united left and center in Missouri, but he decided to run against Cori Bush instead. Now Hawley is growing more influential, with the ascendance of fellow right-wing populist culture-warrior J. D. Vance, while Cori Bush may lose her seat to Bell.
Bell is far from the worst person in American politics. He did stop the criminalization of marijuana and of “deadbeat dads” as prosecutor, thus ending some state harassment of poor and working-class people. Bell has also kept a campaign promise not to impose the death penalty.
But taking genocidal money to unseat a fighter like Bush, while leaving in office a true right-winger like Hawley, would be a massive setback to left causes and another victory for AIPAC and its allied groups who want more blood in Gaza. Her reelection is a top priority for those who envision a better world.