Rep. Cori Bush Loses, Second Squad Member Out

(LibertySociety.com) – Congresswoman Cori Bush became the latest member of the progressive Squad to lose her House seat after she was soundly defeated in last Tuesday’s Missouri Democrat primary.

Bush lost to St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell by nearly six points in a four-way primary race.

The activist lawmaker who launched her first congressional campaign in 2020 off of her involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement following the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, did not take her defeat well.

In a defiant concession speech following last Tuesday’s election, Bush railed against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), vowing revenge against the pro-Israel group that sank money into MO-01 to defeat the pro-Hamas Squad member.

Bush said that now that she was leaving the House, she could take “some strings off” and go after the group. She accused the AIPAC of radicalizing her and warned the group that they “should be afraid” because she was “coming to tear your kingdom down.”

Bush’s anti-Israel rhetoric in part prompted Bell’s decision to challenge her in the primary.

When Bell announced his primary challenge last November, the St. Louis Democrat suggested that Cori Bush’s comments on the Israel-Palestinian conflict revealed “a lack of understanding” about the “complexities” and “nuance” of an issue that has been “hundreds of years in the making.”

AIPAC, along with the United Democracy Project, sank millions into Missouri District-01 in hopes of ousting the activist Bush. Nearly two-thirds of Bell’s campaign funding came from AIPAC while the United Democracy Project spent over $7 million to defeat Cori Bush.

Bush was the second Squad member ousted in a primary this year. In late June, Westchester County Executive George Latimer easily defeated Squad member Jamaal Bowman in the New York primary by a margin of over 17 points.

AIPAC and the United Democracy Project also spent millions to defeat Bowman, with the pro-Israel PAC running $25 million in ads against the pro-Hamas Squad member while the United Democracy Project spent nearly $15 million.