In the race for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, where St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell is challenging Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, the margin of victory is expected to be small. And the Jewish community’s support could prove critical to a potential Bell victory.

Not only is Bell the beneficiary of close to $5 million in outside support to date from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC, but there’s also grassroots Jewish community momentum in his favor — motivated by Bush’s positions on Israel and antisemitism. Bell’s campaign is aiming to capitalize on that energy with an aggressive Jewish voter operation.

Stacey Newman, a former state representative who has been backing Bell in a personal capacity since the beginning of his campaign, formally joined his campaign in June as his coalitions director running Jewish outreach. 

Newman told Jewish Insider that she and others in the Jewish community were, particularly after Oct. 7, working behind the scenes to recruit a candidate to challenge Bush, before Bell, independently, made the decision to enter the race. Newman said she, Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham — who has brought together local rabbis in support of Bell — and Lisa Baron, a local nonprofit leader, came together to build a Jewish outreach program for Bell.

“Our world changed in October completely, and we had to basically come up with what could be a viable plan to basically engage the Jewish community in the 1st Congressional District,” she explained.

Newman added that anti-Israel protests at Washington University in St. Louis have further catalyzed interest from the local community.

Newman told JI that Jewish outreach has been a priority for the campaign — ”basically taking over half of the campaign office; we’ve got Jewish volunteers in here every single day” conducting phone calls and knocking on doors. The Jewish outreach program has produced tailored campaign literature for the community laying out Bell’s support for Israel and the Jewish community.

The campaign has a network of both local Jewish interns and volunteers that are knocking on doors, as well as supporter groups in synagogues across the country whose members are making calls for the campaign. 

Barron said she’s also organizing get-out-the vote activities, particularly targeting Orthodox Jews.

“A lot of people coming in to volunteer for Wesley, who are Jewish, have never done this before,” Newman said. “They don’t really know how it works, but they’re eager.”

Newman said that she researched Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s successful primary challenge against Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Rep. Shontel Brown’s (D-OH) successful races against Nina Turner, but found “there really was no model for this.”

She added that she feels the attention and pressure of the nation on Bell’s race, especially after Latimer’s victory last month.

Newman said that the campaign, and the local Jewish community, don’t have clear data on the size of St. Louis’ Jewish population. Newman said that the campaign has identified around 10,000 Jewish voters in the district, although she believes there are many more. She knows firsthand how critical every single vote is — she once won a primary race by a single vote.

Newman told JI that the response to Bell’s campaign from the Jewish community has been immensely positive, recounting his visit to the St. Louis Holocaust Museum’s fundraiser in October.

“I just walked in the door with him … and he didn’t have to say anything,” Newman said. “People were just coming up and hugging him and thanking him. And it’s been that way ever since. The emotion of having an ally when we clearly did not have one … it’s just connected the entire Jewish community.”

She added that the campaign has unified the Jewish community across denominational boundaries in unexpected ways.

“This is what Oct. 7 did, I think, for the entire world. It doesn’t really matter who we thought we were before. We’re all unified now because we know that antisemitism doesn’t discriminate,” Newman said. “We have all joined hands, regardless of other beliefs we have on other issues. People ask me about November — I say I can’t go there. This is the top of our list. This is too important.”

Newman and Baron said that there’s been especially strong engagement from the Orthodox community, particularly from Orthodox rabbis. 

Several Orthodox rabbis in the community told JI recently that they tend to vote more politically conservative, but are uniting behind Bell, who describes himself as progressive.

“There is no hesitation on anybody’s part that I’ve spoken to,” Baron said. “This has been a very easy — it’s not a sell, it’s an opportunity for people to express themselves in a meaningful way, and they’re very serious about it.”

Baron said that, in the Orthodox community, the campaign is working to remind voters to request a Democratic ballot when they go to the polls and explain that their primary vote won’t impact how they vote in November.

Baron told JI she’s also making a push for community members who have children living in Israel to remind their family members to send in absentee ballots.

Though Bush’s views on Israel and antisemitism catalyzed their opposition, both Newman and Baron said that their frustrations with the incumbent began with unrelated issues.

Baron founded a nonprofit focusing on Alzheimer’s disease, which received national attention and federal funding. The group invited Bush to visit so they could express their appreciation for that federal funding — but Bush’s office never replied, she said.

Newman said she’d had an experience with a “very disappointing constituent service issue with her office — they don’t return phone calls, they don’t help … she wasn’t actually administering her office the way that we all assume a congressperson should.”

Bush’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on these incidents or her campaign’s efforts to engage with Jewish voters.

Newman added that, on a personal level, she considers herself a progressive and had cordial relations with Bush’s office on other issues during her own time in office. But she said she’s felt betrayed and disappointed by former colleagues and other progressives since Oct. 7, who have condemned Newman and defended Bush and her rhetoric.

“It’s disgusting, it’s annoying and it’s heartbreaking to realize,” Newman said. “We all know what it is. It’s that undercurrent of antisemitism that never went away.”