ST. LOUIS—The forces of peace and economic justice here learned the hard lesson yesterday that it is more than just the presidential election they must worry about if they are to turn their state and the country around. The right wing has its eyes on Congress too and, in addition to wanting to take the White House, will stop at nothing to push out of Congress leading progressives like Cori Bush.
The well-funded AIPAC, combined with low voter turnout in the city of St. Louis, as opposed to the suburbs, doomed Progressive “Squad” Rep. Cori Bush’s bid in the August 6 Democratic primary for a third two-year U.S. House term.
With more than 95% of the vote counted, Bush had 56,492 votes, or 45.6%, to 63,340 votes, or 51.2%, for St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell. Two relatively unknown candidates took the rest. The Democratic primary is the deciding election in the heavily Democratic district.
Bell, like Bush, is African-American, but he’s also a supposed “centrist” who turned conservative as the county’s top prosecutor. And, regardless of his precise political standing, he was AIPAC’s willing puppet. During the campaign, for example, Bell bragged about support from and negotiations over police behavior with various municipal departments.
Bush first made a political name for herself as a Black Lives Matter activist, outspoken against police violence against Blacks. But AIPAC’s dollars and Bush’s opposition to Israel’s massively murderous war against Palestinians in Gaza became the key issues in the campaign.
AIPAC is a right-wing heavyweight which garners campaign contributions from Republican big givers and uses the cash to relentlessly pursue any progressive lawmaker who dares to stand up against Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his murderous war, and U.S. support for it. They targeted New York’s Rep. Jamal Bowman in the June primary there and he, another member of the Squad, also went down to defeat.
After becoming the first lawmaker to author legislation, a resolution demanding a ceasefire in the war, and negotiations between Israel and Hamas, AIPAC put a bull’s eye on Bush’s back.
Approximately 40,000 Gazans are dead, double that number are injured or wounded, two million are refugees, and Gazan infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, is virtually destroyed. Israel also halts aid shipments headed for starving Gazans.
The Israeli onslaught doesn’t matter to AIPAC. What matters is to get U.S. politicians to genuflect to rightist Israeli policies backed in Washington, politicians, and its U.S.-funded war machinery. That means beating Cori Bush and like-minded lawmakers.
In a Michigan primary that also happened yesterday Elizabeth Slotkin, a more conservative Democrat and former CIA agent who backs Israel on its policies in Gaza, won her race for the nomination for the U.S. Senate. She is aiming to take in November the seat held by retiring Debbie Stabenow. Someone like Slotkin, a strong backer of Israel, is no problem for AIPAC which trains its guns on the more progressive lawmakers.
AIPAC poured $15 million into the primary against Bush, with three-fifths going for mass media ads on radio, TV, and streaming video. AIPAC won and she lost. That made the Bush-Bell race the second most expensive House primary ever, trailing only one in New York weeks ago where AIPAC spent even more to successfully beat another Netanyahu critic, Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Money was not the sole reason Bush lost. Turnout was also a big factor. St. Louis County heavily outvoted her home, St. Louis City, and the county voted for Bell. Bush won the city vote, 53%-44% in a total turnout of 49,192. But Bell flipped those figures in the county, and turnout was much higher there. He won 56%-44% in a total of 74,627 votes.
Second recent win
Bell’s triumph over Bush was AIPAC’s second win in U.S. House races this year and third in the last two election cycles involving Democrats. It lost once, in Pennsylvania. In each, it relentlessly pursued Democratic progressives who challenged Israel’s war and U.S. aid for it.
Its other win this year, also cloaked in the name of its campaign finance committee, the United Democracy Project, came when George Latimer beat incumbent Jamaal Bowman in a redrawn New York district where Bowman, also a Netanyahu critic, was deprived of his Bronx base via redistricting.
Latimer, the Westchester County executive now had a district to his liking—and AIPAC in his corner spending even more than it did to beat Bush. He trounced Bowman. AIPAC lost in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary around Pittsburgh. Rep. Summer Lee easily beat a corporate executive.
AIPAC notched its first congressional success in an incumbent-versus-incumbent race two years ago in Michigan, when the lobby poured millions of dollars into a negative primary campaign against Democratic Rep. Andy Levin, and won.
Levin, a former union organizer and deputy AFL-CIO Organizing Director, is also a former synagogue president who advocates the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu and his rightist government have a one-state solution: An ultra-right Israel with no Palestinians.
“Bell’s win tonight, along with George Latimer’s victory over Bowman and Republican John McGuire’s defeat of Rep. Bob Good” in Virginia last month “is further proof that being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics on both sides of the aisle,” the project said in a relatively restrained victory crow.
When it first got started, against Levin and others, AIPAC’s partnership declared “Our efforts…send a clear message that those who seek to undermine America’s partnership with Israel can expect a clear and unyielding political response.”
Union endorsements split on the Bush-Bell race. The largest St. Louis-area local, of the United Food and Commercial Workers, endorsed Bell, the St. Louis Labor Tribune reported. But the local posted no formal announcement.
Building trades unions also endorsed Bell, the St. Louis Labor Tribune said. They criticized Bush’s vote against Democratic President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and jobs law, disregarding her counter that Biden had caved into GOP demands to drop programs helping working women, including caregivers, and children from the original legislation.
National Nurses United, the Service Employees, the Fire Fighters, and other non-building trades unions endorsed Bush, as did a local group of non-AIPAC progressive Jews. The state and St. Louis AFL-CIO stayed neutral.
The push against progressive Democrats takes many and sometimes nuanced forms, even from within the party itself. Business reporters for the New York Times have been saying that billionaire Democrats are getting nervous that their money may be going to people who are “too progressive.” Other commentators have been saying, sometimes sounding as if they were thinking wishfully, that Kamala Harris and now Tim Walz are “rethinking” earlier progressive stands and moving more to the center.
More than stressing his support for healthcare for all, union rights, and many other strong social programs they stress the “friendly personality” displayed by Walz. The billionaires seem to have no problem with being friendly as long as it does not do too much harm to their basic class interests.
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