During her concession speech in 2024, Cori Bush promised to take on AIPAC. In today's primary, she hopes to keep that promise. Michael B. Thomas/Getty
In Tuesday’s Democratic congressional primary, voters in Missouri’s first district will decide whether to re-elect moderate incumbent Congressman Wesley Bell or replace him with Cori Bush, the Democratic Socialist who was the district’s Congressional representative until Bell ousted her two years ago.
Alongside Michigan’s Democratic congressional primary, Missouri’s first district race has become a referendum on pro-Israel money in American politics. In 2024, in what was then one of the most expensive primary races in history, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated groups spent more than 8 million dollars backing Bell. Over half of all outside money spent on the race came from the United Democracy Project (UDP), AIPAC’s electoral arm.
Both Bush and Bell came to prominence during the Ferguson uprising, after the fatal shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer in 2014. Bush rose to prominence as an activist, while Bell became the St. Louis County Prosecutor in 2019, running on a police-reform agenda. Bush was elected to Congress in 2020 and reelected in 2022. But in 2024, Bell announced a late-in-the-game run against her. Though he’d initially floated a Missouri Senate run, Bell saw an opening after Bush introduced a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. He pivoted to challenge her from the center, and won by roughly 6 points.
But in the last two years, Democratic public opinion on Israel has shifted dramatically: about 58 pecent of Democrats now say the U.S. is “too supportive” of Israel, up from 45 percent in an AP-NORC poll from January 2024. And multiple polls indicate that the majority of Democrats now believe what Cori Bush was saying back in early 2024: that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. A growing number of Congressional Democrats are casting votes against unconditional aid to Israel. AIPAC funding has become politically toxic, so much so that the group now generally channels its funding through shell groups rather than funding candidates directly. But AIPAC is still one of the biggest spenders in elections nationwide: a report from Sludge shows that the super PAC has spent upwards of $100 million so far this election cycle.
“AIPAC, I am coming to tear your kingdom down,” Bush said in a fiery concession speech when she lost to Bell two years ago. In the years since then, she’s attacked Bell for what she calls an “abandonment” of St. Louis after a devastating tornado hit the district, and for his support of a resolution expressing gratitude to ICE. Bell has brought up Bush’s criticism of Kamala Harris, and her payments to her husband to serve as her security detail.
Bell also comes into this race with more establishment support than he had last cycle, carrying endorsements from figures like Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi. And he says the AIPAC money shouldn’t matter, pointing instead to his local track record: “Voters in our district are worried about the cost of living. They’re worried about health care costs. If you don’t have anything to run on, well, you got to create something. And that’s what other folks in the race are doing,” Bell said.
Bush is banking on the idea that AIPAC money does make a difference, as she hopes to take back the MO-01 seat and join a nationwide wave of Democratic Socialist primary victories. Darializa Chevalier and Claire Valdez unseated more moderate incumbents in New York City last month; Melat Kiros, a young, outspokenly pro-Palestinian socialist in Denver, defeated one of the longest-serving members of Congress, Diana DeGette. Each of these candidates defeated an opponent with AIPAC support—in part by directly attacking AIPAC.
AIPAC’s open support “is becoming a kiss of death to candidates they support in deep-blue districts,” Usamah Andrabi of Justice Democrats, a group which has endorsed Bush, told me last month.
On AIPAC’s involvement in her election, Bush told St. Louis Public Radio in February, “The tide has already turned, and people are saying no. They want to be the ones to pick their representatives. And so, whether that money filters into the community or not, I think the community is also going to call out any candidate who is accepting that money.”
This primary will test whether that is true.
