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The internet had<\/span> a field day last summer when a picture<\/a> surfaced of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., with his arm around a former Democratic member of Congress.<\/p>\n Hawley was at an event in St. Louis, Missouri, celebrating the inclusion of expanded funds for victims of nuclear radiation in President Donald Trump\u2019s signature economic bill. In the photo, the far-right Republican smiled down on former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who had worked with him on the measure, as he embraced her.<\/p>\n Bush was no longer in Congress at the time. She was ousted from her St. Louis seat in a Democratic primary the summer before, after facing more than $18 million<\/a> in spending from outside groups<\/a>, including the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bush\u2019s AIPAC-backed replacement, Rep. Wesley Bell, stood in the background of the photo, off to the side.<\/p>\n \u201cCori, thank you,\u201d Hawley <\/a>said<\/a>. \u201cWe would not be here without you and your work.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a rare show of camaraderie between two officials who rarely saw eye to eye. Bush previously called<\/a> for Hawley\u2019s removal from office in 2021 and said he had blood on his hands after making a show of solidarity with rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that we both respect is fight,\u201d Bush told The Intercept.<\/p>\n \u201cThe community came to me and said, \u2018Cori, where is our fighter?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Though they might disagree on a swathe of other issues, they worked together to deliver the package because it was something they both believed in. Bush said the acknowledgment from Hawley was an honor, particularly because she was no longer in Congress when the bill was finalized. Zero Democrats in the House voted<\/a> for the bill, though Bell said he supported the provision.<\/p>\n \u201cHe decided that he wouldn\u2019t forget about me,\u201d Bush said. \u201cAnd he said that with the current congressman standing behind him. He didn\u2019t acknowledge him.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked recently about the event, Bell <\/a>said<\/a>: \u201cI never take it offensively when Josh Hawley does not give me credit.\u201d (Bell\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n Beyond sparking internet memes speculating that there had been a romantic bent to their embrace, the event and the subsequent photo distilled the heart of Bush\u2019s argument in her campaign to win back her seat on Tuesday in a rematch against Bell.<\/p>\n Bush told The Intercept this cycle is completely different from her last race.<\/p>\n \u201cThis cycle, the momentum met me,\u201d she said. \u201cThe community asked me to run. The community came to me and said, \u2018Cori, where is our fighter?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In many ways, the protracted fight between Bell and Bush started long before either of them ran for Congress.<\/p>\n It was the summer of 2014. Bush was working as a nurse and a pastor. Bell had just lost<\/a> his first campaign for a seat on the St. Louis County Council.<\/p>\n Four days after Bell lost the race, a Ferguson police officer shot and killed<\/a> 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. Protests erupted that would rock the city and launch a nationwide movement against police brutality and overpolicing in Black communities.<\/p>\n Bush drove<\/a> to Ferguson on the second night of demonstrations. She provided mental health support to people in the community. Her work in Ferguson and her ascendance in the Black Lives Matter movement would eventually lead her to run for federal office.<\/p>\n At the time, Bell was an assistant professor of criminal justice at St. Louis Community College, in addition to gigs as a municipal judge and a prosecutor. After he lost his 2014 race in St. Louis, Bell soon set to work on his next campaign for another council seat. This time, though, Bell ran in Ferguson in the city\u2019s first election<\/a> since Brown\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n Ferguson was a majority-Black city with a largely white government<\/a>, and Bell, the son of a police officer, was at the time one of four Black candidates <\/a>running to reshape the city council. One supporter compared<\/a> him to former President Barack Obama and speculated that he might eventually make it to Congress.<\/p>\n Bell would eventually do just that, though perhaps not in the way some of his supporters envisioned it. Bell moved from the Ferguson City Council to the office of the top prosecutor in St. Louis County, campaigning as a reformer and toppling the three-decade incumbent who\u2019d <\/a>failed to indict<\/a> Brown\u2019s killer. He <\/a>transformed<\/a> the prosecutor\u2019s office, ending cash bail for misdemeanors and launching a unit dedicated to reviewing wrongful convictions and addressing <\/a>police abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n Four years later, Bell launched a primary to unseat Bush. He initially ran for Senate in Missouri, but saw an opening to take on the incumbent after she introduced<\/a> a resolution for a ceasefire <\/a>in Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza shortly after the October 7 attacks. Two weeks after the legislation was introduced, Bell dropped his Senate bid<\/a> and announced his campaign against Bush.<\/p>\n It soon looked like Bell had made a sound political judgment. The pro-Israel lobby made Bush one of their top targets<\/a>, with AIPAC pouring more than $8 million into the race, and Bell vanquished her in the primary.<\/p>\n Before resigning from office to enter Congress in 2025, one of his last acts as a prosecutor was <\/a>slapping Ferguson protesters with felony charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a Democratic primary cycle that\u2019s been largely defined by frustration with incumbents, Bell is aligned with two political forces that the party\u2019s base increasingly views as enemies. He\u2019s an incumbent with AIPAC on his side \u2014 though the group has invested just a fraction of its 2024 spending, with its super PAC United Democracy Project putting more than $3 million<\/a> into the race this July.<\/p>\n One thing Bell does not have is Bush\u2019s grassroots army. Though he\u2019s far outraised Bush and has outside spending in his corner, Bush is buoyed by organizers with the St. Louis chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The group, of which Bush is a member, has helped power insurgent candidates and topple incumbents<\/a> from New York to Colorado this cycle. She also has endorsements from the progressive group Justice Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. (Bush told The Intercept she has not spoken to her former Squad colleague, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.)<\/p>\n Facing that insurgency from below, Bell has not shown up to a series of candidate forums, frustrating Democratic organizers who say they rearranged schedules to accommodate him. One of the only polls in the race, released this spring, showed Bell just 4 percentage points ahead of Bush, with 17 percent undecided.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people have buyer\u2019s remorse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n After being saturated with negative ads and mail<\/a> from AIPAC and other groups that spent on the 2024 primary, St. Louis residents are slightly more prepared this time around, said organizers backing Bush\u2019s campaign, including Jessica Montgomery, co-chair of the St. Louis DSA chapter. Montgomery said she joined DSA in 2021 because of her experience volunteering on Bush\u2019s 2020 campaign, when she toppled a half-century<\/a> political dynasty on her second attempt<\/a> at the seat.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people have buyer\u2019s remorse,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cWesley Bell was selling himself to be a certain way, and now that he\u2019s been in office, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s lived up to what he was selling people.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with those factors on her side, Bush is still facing headwinds.<\/p>\n There\u2019s the obvious problem: She lost her last primary.<\/p>\n She\u2019s also facing a recently launched investigation<\/a> by the Missouri attorney general, an unelected<\/a> Republican official, over allegations that funds she raised for tornado relief were moved to a political committee. There\u2019s been reporting on her using PACs not connected to her campaign to legally pay salaries to herself and her husband totaling $25,500<\/a>. Her husband was the target of charges for pandemic loan fraud in a case that was dismissed<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n And she was the subject of an investigation<\/a> launched by the Department of Justice in 2024 into using campaign funds to pay her now-husband for campaign security services, an issue the Office of Congressional Ethics had previously investigated and dismissed<\/a>. (A conservative group had originally filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about the spending in 2023, claiming that Bush had used campaign funds for personal use.)<\/p>\n Bush has said all those claims, including her husband\u2019s pandemic loan probe that started under former President Joe Biden, were politically motivated attempts to discredit her. The person who eventually signed<\/a> her husband\u2019s indictment was the former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, who at the time led the federal prosecutor\u2019s office that brought the charge.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they\u2019re talking about is less than what someone would be paid for a part-time job,\u201d Bush said of the salaries she and her husband drew from PAC money. She added that the investigations into her husband were part of a broader effort to tear her down. (There has been no public update investigation by the Department of Justice investigation, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe DOJ investigation against me did not go anywhere,\u201d Bush told The Intercept. \u201cThere was someone that is no longer with the DOJ who we were told said, \u2018Well, we just have to keep looking. Let\u2019s look into her husband now,\u2019 because the target was me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Two Paths From Ferguson<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Grassroots Energy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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