ST. LOUIS — It was three years ago, but Rep. Cori Bush remembers it like it was yesterday. 

She was back in her St. Louis-area district with then-U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh for a roundtable about the care economy. She was just six months into her first two-year House of Representatives term, and Congress was debating how to move forward with President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion investment plan for both physical and human infrastructure as the country recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A fast food worker who made $12.10 an hour and struggled to afford caring for her family picked up the microphone and asked Bush and Walsh to listen to her story, then to “make something happen.”

“She reached across the table and pointed directly at me — she pointed at me, out of all of these people — and she said: ‘You don’t forget about us,’” Bush told The 19th in a recent interview at her campaign office. 

“It was so intense. … I’ll never forget it,” she added. 

The votes that Bush cast in the months that followed on various configurations of Biden’s economic agenda — and the role she played fighting for the inclusion of progressive priorities as a member of the high-profile Squad — have become central to her opponent’s case against her. Now, with the August 6 primary imminent, the likelihood of Bush returning to Congress is in doubt.

Specifically, Bush’s critics are highlighting the vote she cast that November against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion bipartisan plan to improve the country’s roads and bridges that had none of the previously proposed caregiving components.  

Democratic leaders had spent months trying to figure out the best path forward, vacillating between passing a bipartisan package that jettisoned the caregiving elements prioritized by progressives or a comprehensive but partisan measure that was being blocked by two centrist Democratic senators who have since left the party. The protracted and contentious negotiations forced many lawmakers, including Bush, to make a call about how to best shape their party’s future and serve their constituents: Get in line or hold the line? 

When the physical-infrastructure-only bill came to the floor, Bush said, her choice was clear: “The thing is, we weren’t voting against the bill, we were voting to hold the leverage so that both bills could be voted on and passed because that was our chance: We had the House, we had the Senate and we had the White House.”

“We need both of these investments: We need roads and child care; we need bridges and homes; we need all of it,” Bush said.

Though Bush and five of her fellow Squad members held out and voted no on the physical infrastructure legislation, Democrats got the bill over the finish line with the help of 13 Republicans in the House and 19 in the Senate. Like she feared, there was never another opening to seriously revisit the caregiving measures. 

Bush’s opponent, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, has cited her “no” vote on infrastructure as evidence she is an ineffective legislator, unresponsive to her constituents and not supportive of Biden’s economic agenda as the two compete in a tight primary in a safe blue district. 

“She’s working against the Democratic Party,” Bell said in an interview. “She voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is indefensible. … In our system of government, when do you ever get everything you want? You can’t just throw the baby out with the bathwater, you’ve got to work together.”

Bell’s criticism of Bush is being amplified by a more than $7 million campaign by influential pro-Israel organizations, which late last year announced a $100 million effort to replace Democrats deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. Among the top targets are Squad members, most of whom called for a ceasefire in Gaza during the early days of the Israel-Hamas war. The progressive group Justice Democrats, which recruited some members of the Squad to run for Congress, has spent $1.8 million to support Bush in the race. 

The pro-Israel groups’ ads don’t attack Bush’s stance on U.S. support for Israel and instead feature her votes on infrastructure and other economic policies such as raising the debt ceiling. A recent mailer sent to voters in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District states, “When Cori Bush voted against the infrastructure deal, she voted against: money for bridges and roads; replacing dangerous lead pipes; thousands of jobs for St. Louis.”

The groups behind the campaign, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated political spending committee, United Democracy Project (UDP), along with the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), have already notched a victory this year, collectively spending nearly $15 million to oust fellow Squad member Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a New York primary that ended up being the most expensive in history. 

DMFI President Mark Mellman predicted after Bowman’s loss that Bush would be next, telling ABC News that she uses “the same kind of vituperative, anti-Israel rhetoric, the same kind of anti-Israel votes, the same kind of divisive approach to politics on this issue and on broader Democratic issues.” At the time, DMFI polling showed Bell with a one-point lead over Bush. Updated polling they released this week showed his lead has grown to six points. 

The pro-Israel groups historically support Democrats. But in recent years, as they began wading into Democratic primary contests, the amount of money coming from Republican donors increased. Given that the groups nearly always back the more moderate candidate in a race, progressives have criticized their efforts as giving conservative mega donors a back-door route to pick winners and losers in Democratic primary elections. 

The prosecutor and the ‘politivist’ 

Bush and Bell, who are both Black, have political résumés that start at the same place: the racial justice protests in Ferguson. Those began on August 10, 2014, the day after a White police officer fatally shot Black teenager Michael Brown, 18, and continued with varying degrees of intensity for several months as the city, then the country, debated issues such as race, equity and policing. 

Bush, now 48, grew up in St. Louis County, watching her father serve as an alderman and mayor of the city of Northwoods, Missouri. She earned a nursing degree, founded a church and served as its pastor. Bell, now 49, grew up nearby, the son of a police officer and a civil servant. He went to law school, then worked as a public defender, criminology professor at a community college and a municipal court judge.

During the Ferguson uprising, Bush used her medical training to serve as a triage nurse for the activists out in the streets. Bell often acted as a mediator between the protesters and the government entities and officials trying to respond to the unrest. 

Kayla Reed, who protested after Brown’s death and went on to co-found the grassroots racial justice organization Action St. Louis, said she doesn’t remember the specific day she met Bush but recalled seeing her wearing  scrubs. 

“I came to really appreciate the clarity she had, wanting to be in the protest space, fighting for justice in the case of Michael Brown … but also her very specific desire to show up for the community that had been exposed to that trauma,” she said. “I think Wesley played a different role, Cori protested as a protester, his desire was to be an intermediary.”

Just before the protests, Bell made an unsuccessful bid for the St. Louis County Council. After, he was elected in 2015 to the Ferguson City Council, beating a first-time candidate popular with the protesters. Three years later, he was elected county prosecutor, running on a platform of community-based policing and reforming the cash bail system, with backing from many of the activist groups that came into being after the protests. He said he would open a new inquiry into Brown’s death, and he beat 25-year incumbent Democrat Bob McCulloch, who did not prosecute the police officer who shot Brown.

Bell describes himself as a progressive prosecutor and touts a diversion program that he says dramatically reduced recidivism rates in cases related to substance abuse and mental health. A report published this week by a coalition of organizations in the racial justice and legal aid space, some of which worked to elect Bell, concluded his prosecutorial tenure has yielded more mixed results — the county jail’s population is now as high as it was when McCulloch left office, with about 60 percent more Black women behind bars than one year ago. Bell has said the report was prepared by his political rivals — and Bush’s supporters. 

Bush, after Ferguson, competed in the 2016 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, coming in a distant second to a former secretary of state, who lost that November to incumbent Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. Two years later, she launched a House primary campaign against 20-year incumbent Rep. Lacy Clay, whose father had held the seat for 30 years before him, but lost by nearly 20 points. In 2020, she tried again and won. 

The first thing Bush introduced as a member of Congress was a resolution that would have directed the House Ethics Committee to investigate the actions of any of her new colleagues who sought to overturn Biden’s valid 2020 victory during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. During her three years in the House, Bush has focused on affordable housing, including preventing evictions, as well as abortion rights and reproductive health. She has described herself as a “politivist,” because she has continued to engage in protest and activism as a member of Congress. 

Bush’s and Bell’s paths converged again last autumn when, shortly after Bush cosponsored a resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire, Bell announced he would challenge her in the Democratic primary to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. 

It came as a surprise because just four months before, Bell had said that he would seek the Democratic nomination to run against Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a quest that in the deep red state was all but certain to fail. As he was exploring that bid, Bell called Bush to ask for advice and support. She offered to connect him with key senators, as well as to the party’s political arm that handles Senate races, and said they could discuss an endorsement at a later date. Bush initially described the conversation to The 19th in mid July. Then, this week, Drop Site News published an audio recording of the exchange in which the two also discuss speculation that Bell might instead challenge Bush for her House seat. “Don’t even think for even a second that that is the case,” Bell told her. “I’m telling you right now, I’m telling you on my word: I am not running against you. That is not happening.”

Before the recording was released, Bell told The 19th that his decision to switch to the House was prompted by many things, including conversations he had early in his Senate bid with constituents. He said the “recurring theme” was that they did not have a good working relationship with Bush. 

“I know that from my vantage point, the congresswoman has never really worked with our office — I didn’t know if that was throughout the district. I know that I’m in public safety, and I know she’s a ‘defund the police’ person, so she doesn’t work with us because we enforce” the law, Bell said. 

Bell said he was also encouraged to run by people in Democratic politics in Washington. 

“It was like: OK, you might have a shot at the Senate, it’s going to be tough as a Democrat in Missouri right now, but it’s possible — but you’ve got a problem at home, your congresswoman isn’t working with anyone,” he said.

Bell said the argument that Bush wasn’t being responsive to her constituents is the one that “pushed me over the finish line.” It is a criticism that he has reiterated during his campaign, and it has been echoed by the interest groups supporting him.

Who’s backing Bush and Bell 

Bell’s challenge of Bush has forced Democrats and progressive groups to pick between them — including those who have supported them both in the past. In Bell’s corner are local elected officials and labor unions that include the local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Sheet Metal Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Bush has her own roster of electeds behind her, along with SEIU Healthcare, National Nurses United and the Communication Workers of America. 

Megan Green, the president of the Board of Alderman, the legislative body of the city of St. Louis, has known Bush and Bell since the Ferguson protests, in which she also participated. Over the years, she has supported them both. When Bell ran for prosecutor, for example, Green knocked doors on his behalf. “I did so in large part because our local Black Lives Matter movement felt like he would be the candidate to reform the prosecutor’s office and center the demands of the movement,” she told The 19th.

Now that they’re both in the same House race, Green is backing Bush, whom she has worked with on issues that range from crafting a bill of rights for unhoused people to the city’s aging water infrastructure to helping Washington University students arrested for protesting Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Green questions why Bell decided to “go after a progressive Black woman, rather than challenge the Republican” and sees the matchup as an unorthodox one in which the challenger is the well-financed candidate of the establishment, while the incumbent is the visionary disrupter. “I think the biggest issue in the race is a choice between a vision and status quo — Cori is a visionary, she is the moral compass … she is not afraid to talk about uncomfortable truths or make us have to challenge some of our previously held belief systems in order to be better people,” Green said. 

The Missouri AFL-CIO, which endorsed Bush in her 2020 and 2022 races, and Bell in his prosecutor’s race, has remained neutral during this year’s primary. But when The 19th spoke to Missouri AFL-CIO President Jake Hummel at the St. Louis Building & Construction Trades Council’s recent annual golf outing, at which Bell accepted a leadership award, Hummel said that he personally supports Bell’s candidacy. “Congresswoman Bush’s vote on President Biden’s infrastructure bill is an unforgivable act for me — I represent hundreds of thousands of construction workers across Missouri,” Hummel said. 

Hummel understands why some of the AFL-CIO’s member unions have endorsed Bush and others Bell. But, having served in the statehouse, Hummel rejected the idea that Bush’s “no” vote on the infrastructure bill gave her any additional clout during subsequent negotiations over the caregiving components. “My conviction stands. If that was something that was important to people in my district, I wouldn’t have voted that way just for political expediency, or to make myself look good to a different subset of voters,” he said. 

An abortion access hub

Bush’s supporters and core constituencies, as you might expect, tell a very different story about constituent work than the one presented by Bell and his backers. A legislator can respond to a district’s crumbling roads by voting for infrastructure spending — but a legislator can also help voters navigate the loss of abortion rights by creating a dashboard to help them access health care after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, as Bush did two years ago. 

Missourians working in the reproductive rights space in particular point to Bush’s willingness to tell her personal story — she has talked about getting multiple abortions, including one after she was raped at 17 — as one reason they consider her a champion for their cause and not merely a supporter. On the day the court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, for example, Bush was at a Planned Parenthood in the district and poised for immediate response.

“I walked straight out of there and hopped on television, on the other side of the gate right there at Planned Parenthood. And we stood there all day long. And we did interview after interview, making sure people knew, hey, you can still have access today, you can still get treated,” Bush said. “Then we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a rally right here at Planned Parenthood, show up.’ Hundreds of people showed up. People were heartbroken. Fathers were heartbroken for their daughters, you know, coming up, hugging me, saying, ‘How did this happen to my daughter?’ We were able to have that community, right there. Wesley Bell? Did he show up at that rally that evening? No.”

Bell was one of dozens of elected prosecutors who in the days after Dobbs said they would not prosecute people seeking or providing abortions; he has shown support for reproductive justice groups aiming to get an abortion rights initiative onto Missouri ballots by dropping off cookies at petition-signing events, and by hosting one of his own.

The Rev. Dr. Love Holt, a trained nurse who works at a doulas organization, said in the hours following the court’s Dobbs decision, she was “receiving a lot of phone calls and people were afraid, they were 100 percent in fear, they were confused.”

The hub from Bush’s campaign office was the resource they needed. “With all of the work that she’s done, she’s collaborated with so many experts on the ground, she has really spent time getting all the work in … so now we trust Cori, Cori and her team, to provide us with accurate services and information. And that one project really brought down the walls in the minds and hearts of lower-income communities like mine,” Holt said.

In the weeks after Dobbs, Bush introduced five pieces of legislation related to reproductive health.

Primary elections are opportunities for base voters to decide what direction their party should take by picking leaders who bring different legislative priorities and contrasting leadership styles — they nearly always, to varying degrees, offer a choice between an institutionalist and an activist. Bell and his backers have framed the matchup as one between a party loyalist (Bell) and a rabble-rousing lawmaker who isn’t responsive to voters’ concerns (Bush). Bush and her orbit see the contest as one between an activist who is going to push the Democratic Party to prioritize the needs of its most vulnerable (Bush) and an opportunist most interested in accumulating political power (Bell).

Last week, Michael Brown Sr. waded into the primary race, nearly a decade after his son was killed, inspiring an uprising that sparked both now-rival candidates’ political careers. In a video endorsement, Brown stands beside his daughter, then Bush. 

“After the murder of my son, Wesley Bell promised to pursue justice for my family … I feel like he lied to us, he never brought charges against the killer, he never walked the streets of Ferguson with me, he failed to reform the office, he used my family for power — and now he’s trying to sell out St. Louis,” Brown said.