Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., vowed retribution against a pro-Israel PAC after she lost a primary race Tuesday.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent $8 million against Bush through its super PAC, United Democracy Project, promoting her opponent, Wesley Ball, and noting that Bush had missed 187 votes while in Congress and voted against President Joe Biden's Build Back Better infrastructure bill.
Ball defeated Bush 51% to 46% to win the Democrat primary in Missouri's 1st Congressional District, representing St. Louis and surrounding areas.
Bush earned AIPAC's ire after she called Israel an "apartheid state." Days before the primary, Bush refused to say Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Bush is the second member "The Squad," a left-wing group of House Democrats, to be defeated after Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., lost a primary campaign in June in a race that also included heavy outside spending from AIPAC.
"As much as I love my job, all they did was radicalize me, and now they should be afraid," Bush said of AIPAC after her loss. "They're about to see this other Cori, this other side. There is nothing that happens in my life that happens in vain. So, this happened because it was meant to happen. And let me say, it's because of the work that I need to do. And let me say this: AIPAC, I'm coming to tear your kingdom down."
Bush voted no on a resolution barring Hamas members from entering the U.S. and called the Israel-Hamas war "Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign."
While AIPAC mainly attacked Bowman for his lack of support for Israel, it tailored its attacks on Bush to issues affecting her St. Louis district.
"Clearly the kind of kitchen-table economic issues are a bigger deal in St. Louis," said Patrick Dorton, a United Democracy Project spokesperson to Politico. "New York is just different. [In] New York, it was less about economics and more about social issues."
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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