Cori Bush, a prominent member of the progressive “caucus” in Congress, has lost her Democratic primary in St Louis after pro-Israel pressure groups spent millions of dollars to unseat her for criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza.
St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell won Missouri’s first black female congresswoman with about 51 percent of the vote. Bush took about 46 percent.
Bell’s win is the second major win for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) after it played a leading role in the June primary election of New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman, another progressive Democrat who criticized the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. .
Aipac pumped $8.5 million into the race in Missouri’s first congressional district to support Bell through its campaign finance arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), after Bush angered some pro-Israel groups as one of the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire. After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
Much of the UDP’s money comes from billionaires who fund hard-line pro-Israel causes and Republicans of other races, including some who have donated to Donald Trump’s campaign.
Bush condemned Hamas for killing 1,139 people, mostly Israelis, and kidnapping hundreds more in October. But he also enraged some Jews and pro-Israel groups by describing Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza and the large-scale killing of civilians as “collective punishment against the Palestinians” and a war crime.
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During the campaign, the UDP flooded St. Louis with ads hostile to Bush — though, as in other congressional races targeted by pro-Israel groups, it rarely mentioned the war in Gaza, which has claimed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, or his call. for a ceasefire.
Instead, the campaign focused on Bush’s voting record in Congress, particularly his failure to support Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill in 2021 and his support for the “free the police” campaign. Bush was trying to get his message across that the UDP is misrepresenting both situations.
UDP’s share was more than half of all the money spent on the competition outside of the campaigns themselves.
Bell has denied that he was recruited by pro-Israel groups to run against Bush, but suspicions were raised after he dropped a challenge for the US Senate and entered a congressional race shortly after Jewish organizations in St Louis began seeking a candidate against Bush, accusing him of “deliberate of fueling anti-Semitism”.
Bell is expected to win one of the safest congressional seats for Democrats in November’s general election.
