How Wesley Bell engineered a come-from-behind victory over Cori Bush

When Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) offered her concession speech on Tuesday night after losing the Democratic primary to St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, she unleashed a tirade against the powerful pro-Israel lobby, which spent millions to defeat her.

Her loss, the Squad member said, “takes some strings off,” and she vowed, “AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down.”

Yet interviews with a number of St. Louis-area strategists watching the race reveal that one of its central narratives — that heavy spending by national pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel fueled Bush’s loss — is only one part of a complex picture that explains Bush’s political downfall. In fact, local issues, rather than her strident criticisms of Israel, may have played a more important role and gave pro-Israel groups an opening, they say.

Bush ultimately lost her seat because she fell out of step with her district on a range of key issues — including the bipartisan infrastructure bill and support for defunding police, while failing to provide adequate constituent service in her home district, according to strategists.

The AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project spent more than $8.5 million in the race, while Democratic Majority for Israel spent more than $500,000. But those watching the race say those attack ads wouldn’t have been effective without Bush’s myriad political vulnerabilities, most of them unrelated to her views on Israel.

Braxton Payne, a Democratic strategist in St. Louis, who did not work for either side, said anti-Bush messaging in the district focused not on her views on Israel but on vulnerabilities including missing votes, voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and child tax credit and otherwise breaking with the Biden administration. 

Those knocks on Bush all featured prominently in the UDP messaging campaign in the district. Anjan Mukherjee, a spokesperson for Bell, said they were also among the campaign’s key priorities.

“When she ran four years ago, one of the main things that she had talked about was serving St. Louis, and I heard from a lot of voters that there wasn’t great outreach,” Payne added. “A lot of them said that they didn’t see her come back to the district a lot — so that being a narrative especially among older voters, that I heard a lot.”

Payne said Bush had been holding fewer town halls for constituents and failing to show up for ward meetings as she did when she was first running for office.

Some in the district also saw Bush as a “ladder climber” who had failed to keep her focus on the district, focusing instead on creating a national profile, Payne said.

Payne added that the district, especially older Black voters, remains loyal to the Democratic establishment and took umbrage with Bush’s breaks with President Joe Biden. The district includes both the city of St. Louis and the surrounding St. Louis County.

Bush’s votes against the infrastructure bill lost her the support of some of the city’s key unions in the construction trade, which backed Bell. Those endorsements, which Bush’s 2022 challenger didn’t have, gave Bell “more credibility among a lot of traditional Democratic voters,” Payne said, and created a permission structure to break with Bush.

Darius Jones, the founder of the National Black Empowerment Action Fund, which sought to highlight Bush’s record to the Black community, said that polling found that public safety, jobs, the economy and cost of living were key issues that led Black voters to be “disenchanted” with Bush. Jones is also a former AIPAC staffer.

Jones said polling and canvassing showed Bush’s positions in favor of defunding the police and legalizing drugs hurt her support in the district, as did her vote against the infrastructure bill and other Biden-backed legislation and her opposition to government contracts for Boeing, which has a manufacturing facility in the city.

Jones said that Bush’s focus on “doing things to kind of advance [her] own persona” and “divisive” activist posture also hurt her among Black voters, based on polling.

Payne said Bell is well-known, especially in the St. Louis County portion of the district, having won two elections for county prosecutor, representing an early vanguard of the progressive movement.

“He was the original progressive in this area that took on a more traditional Democrat in a time where there wasn’t a Squad … and he won with little to no money,” said Payne, who worked for the campaign of the incumbent prosecutor Bell unseated.

“He became very popular with the progressive groups, so Cori Bush trying to hit him [as] a Republican or wolf in sheep’s clothing … didn’t resonate with a lot of Democratic and progressive voters and older Democrats” who had been familiar with Bell for years, he explained.

Payne said polling showed that Bell’s favorability remained consistent throughout the campaign, indicating that Bush’s hits on Bell — including attacking him for receiving backing from AIPAC — didn’t land. 

Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist who worked with several groups active in St. Louis, said that polling in the district reflected that Bush’s anti-AIPAC messaging and failure to focus on local issues weren’t effective, particularly among Black voters.

Payne said Bush might have “moved the needle a little bit” if she had deployed earlier an ad showing the father of Michael Brown, who was killed by police in Ferguson, Mo., criticizing Bell. But Payne wasn’t sure it would have been enough to save her.

Payne theorized that Bush’s funding challenges — she was putting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign funds toward legal bills in an ongoing federal investigation, held her back from a more aggressive advertising effort. But he said that the scandal itself, that Bush paid her now-husband as a security guard using campaign funds, didn’t feature prominently in the race.

Payne said that younger white progressives in St. Louis city are likely to be among Bush’s strongest voting blocs, but turnout in the city was down 10% from 2020, indicating that Bush’s base wasn’t energized to keep her in Congress.

Mukherjee said that Bell had outperformed the campaign’s expectations in the city, adding that the campaign had detected a surge in momentum in his favor in the final weeks of the race.

While ward-level results aren’t public yet, Bell’s success in St. Louis County suggests strength among older Black voters, as well as the Jewish population concentrated in that area of the district, Payne added.

The “constant bombardment” of ads by UDP and other groups in the district undeniably helped Bell, Payne added, pointing to his surge in head-to-head polls from well behind Bush, Payne said.

But Reinish argued that Bush “did this to herself … Cori Bush would not have been vulnerable had she not been so far out of the mainstream, both as a messenger and as a legislator.”

Stacey Newman, a former Democratic state lawmaker who ran Jewish outreach for Bell’s campaign, told JI that she had been a Bush supporter, but that her rhetoric after Oct. 7 was a breaking point. Newman said she was contacted shortly after the Hamas attack by a group of St. Louis politicos — many non-Jewish — about an effort to recruit a challenger to Bush over concerns about her overall record and stances.

She said that the group had discussions with another candidate who had been considering a run, but ultimately declined to do so, and settled on Bell as the strongest challenger. 

They had begun to plan outreach efforts to Bell when Bell preempted them, independently deciding to drop his bid for Missouri’s Senate seat and run for Bush’s House seat instead. She said she’s not aware of any other recruitment efforts that were launched against Bush.

“[Bell] says there are several reasons why he jumped in, but I know in my heart that Oct. 7 was a prime reason for him,” Newman said.

Payne said, to his knowledge, Bell made the jump from Missouri’s Senate race into the House race because he realized he didn’t have a shot at winning the Democratic primary against Lucas Kunce.

“But he also saw a pathway in better representing St. Louis,” Payne said.

Mark Mellman, the chairman of Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm, DMFI PAC, told JI that he recognized the primary would be difficult from the start. The group commissioned polling in January that showed Bell trailing Bush by 16 points, a deficit he recalled as “off-putting to some people we talked to.”

“But we saw the vulnerability there beneath the surface,” he stressed. “There was no question that it was tougher than the Bowman-Latimer race, but it was possible,” he said of the primary in New York’s 16th Congressional District that saw Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeating Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Parallels have been drawn between the two races, including both candidates’ rejections of the infrastructure package and alleged weaknesses in engaging with their districts, in addition to massive pro-Israel spending and strong local Jewish engagement.

In the closing weeks of the race, DMFI PAC released its final poll, with Bell leading Bush by six points — a margin commensurate with the result on Tuesday night.

“What we saw initially was that Bush was actually a pretty popular person personally,” Mellman told JI. But voters, he said, had “serious doubts about her job performance.”

Bell, on the other hand, “was fairly well-known” in the district, Mellman said. But voters weren’t familiar with his policy initiatives as a local elected official, including a program to divert low-level offenders from incarceration that was among the issues DMFI PAC highlighted in positive ads to define the county prosecutor as a “progressive fighter.”

Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for UDP, attributed the group’s success, in part, to the barrage of ads it ran on what he described as “the issues voters most cared about.” He cited polling that showed economic issues were particularly “important” in the district, noting that Bush’s vote in 2021 against a bipartisan infrastructure bill “was a top issue that helped determine the race.”

“What else became clear was that Bush had lost a lot of local support,” Dorton said, adding that her constituents “cared that she didn’t show up for a ton of votes and had never passed a bill into law.”

Dorton said it was “not true” that UDP had targeted Bush because she called for a cease-fire in Gaza, as some of her allies have suggested. Instead, the group “focused on” Bush because of what he called her “atrocious” record on Israel, pointing to her vote against Iron Dome funding as well as a House resolution condemning Hamas, which she recently declined to call a terrorist group.

Bush, he argued, had “one of the worst anti-Israel records in Congress.”

Bell’s campaign also ran an aggressive outreach campaign to Jewish voters, which was supplemented by nonpartisan voter turnout operations from  local nonpartisan groups, St. Louis Together — which said Jewish turnout hit “historic” levels — and St. Louis Votes, as well as Agudath Israel of America.

Newman said that antisemitic hatred directed at the campaign “ballooned” in recent weeks, including frequent and aggressive protests outside the campaign office and vandalized yard signs. She thinks that that helped motivate Jewish voters to turn out for Bell.

“I think particularly volunteers and people were seeing that … they were feeling it,” Newman said. She also linked concerns back to anti-Israel protests at St. Louis’ Washington University earlier this year, blocks from the campaign office

Newman said that the Bell campaign had also brought the St. Louis Jewish community together, across partisan and denominational lines, in a way she’s never seen before.

Benjamin Singer, CEO of St. Louis Together, said the group and St. Louis Votes harnessed volunteers’ personal social networks, contact lists from synagogues and the Jewish Community Relations Council to help bring Jewish voters to the polls and provide information about early voting.

He said they aimed to “replicate” a nonpartisan Jewish turnout effort in New York’s 16th District that brought Jewish voters to the polls with the message that “antisemitism is on the ballot.”

“I think our community needs to be proud and loud and show up,” Singer said. “Our community, every community, deserves to be heard.”

Bush’s concession speech on Tuesday night, with its threat against AIPAC, will likely only further fuel fears in the Jewish community. As of early Wednesday evening, Bush had yet to call Bell to offer her concession directly, Mukherjee added.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned Bush’s comments.

“It is important that we be very mindful of what we say. This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and divisive and incredibly unhelpful,” she said. “We’re going to continue to condemn any type of political rhetoric in that way, in that vein, and so it is important to be mindful in what we say and how we say it. But we cannot have this type of inflammatory, divisive language in our political discourse. Not now, not ever.”

Bell said in an interview that Bush’s comments are “disappointing … at this point it’s time for us to all work together if the vibrancy and success of this region is the priority.”

Payne said Bush’s comments suggesting that she’d been held back by “strings” before but was now free to unleash her full opinions were “very interesting” because he’s never known her or other committed activists to restrain their full views. “What she said last night was kind of jarring to me. Who’s advising you not to do things and what are you going to do next?”

Newman, Bell’s Jewish outreach director and a former state lawmaker, said she’s been concerned about her safety during the campaign  — something she said she’d never experienced before — and even needed to call police when she was alone at the campaign office on one occasion. Newman said that Bush’s closing speech perpetuated those fears. 

In a video released by AIPAC, Bell thanked the pro-Israel group for its support and vowed that he’d continue to be an ally.

“We’re not getting across the finish line without all of you,” Bell said. “We know how important it is to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters, to stand with Israel, and as the Democratic nominee … I want you to know that you will always have an ally with me.”

Jewish Insider’s features reporter Matthew Kassel contributed reporting.

Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri primary 

Wesley Bell defeated Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) on Tuesday in a closely watched primary, becoming the second Democratic challenger of the cycle to unseat a Squad-aligned incumbent.

Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, prevailed over Bush, a two-term congresswoman, in an upset that followed Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s (D-NY) loss to Westchester County Executive George Latimer in June. 

Bell won the race by a comfortable five-point margin over Bush, 51-46%.

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the trust the people of this district have placed in me,” Bell said in a statement. “This victory belongs to every volunteer, every supporter, and every voter who believes in our vision for a better future.”

Pro-Israel groups invested heavily in the race to boost Bell’s campaign against Bush, whose hostile views toward Israel faced backlash in the district. 

The super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, United Democracy Project, was by far the biggest spender, dropping more than $8.5 million into a race that became one of the most expensive elections of the cycle.

“AIPAC congratulates Wesley Bell for his consequential victory over an incumbent anti-Israel detractor,” the group said in a statement. “Once again, a progressive pro-Israel Democrat has prevailed over a candidate who represents the extremist fringe that is hostile to the Jewish state.”

UDP added in a statement that, “Bell’s win tonight, along with George Latimer’s (D) victory over Rep. Jamaal Bowman and John McGuire’s (R) defeat of Rep. Bob Good, is further proof that being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics on both sides of the aisle.”

Mark Mellman, the chairman of Democratic Majority for Israel, which also endorsed Bell, said the results underscored that “being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, but also smart politics.”

“And there’s another valuable lesson in these results — Democrats do not want division or extremism,” Mellman added in a statement.

The local Jewish community was also engaged in the primary, including grassroots efforts to increase voter turnout. Nearly 50% of the district’s Orthodox community, for instance, voted early in the election, according to A.D. Motzen, the national director of government affairs at Agudath Israel of America.

“Just from what I saw during early voting and today, the amount of Jewish voter turnout was incredible,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham of Congregation B’nai Amoona, a Conservative synagogue in the St. Louis area, who supported Bell. “The rallying that took place is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“It feels amazing on many levels,” Abraham added, of Bell’s victory. “Most importantly we now have someone representing us who is willing to sit down and listen to us and have a meaningful dialogue on the issues. We also were able to get a blatant antisemite out of Congress.”

Additional reporting contributed by JI’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod

Wesley Bell builds momentum in final days of Missouri primary

A new poll commissioned by Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm suggests that momentum is building for Wesley Bell as he prepares to take on Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) in a hotly contested primary next week.

The poll shows Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis, with a six-point lead over Bush, a prominent Squad-affiliated lawmaker who has faced backlash from Jewish voters over her strident criticism of Israel. Among 400 likely Democratic primary voters surveyed between July 21-24, Bell led Bush, 48-42%, according to a polling memo shared on Monday.

His performance was an improvement over a previous poll released by DMFI PAC and conducted in mid-June, which showed Bell — at 43% — with a one-point lead in the race. Both polls were conducted by the Mellman Group. 

Other recent polls have shown Bell strongly positioned to prevail as he seeks to become the second challenger this cycle to unseat a Squad incumbent, replicating Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s victory over Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in New York last month.

In an echo of that race, the St. Louis primary has quietly become one of the most expensive of the congressional cycle — with a diverse coalition of outside groups spending millions to boost Bell’s campaign. The biggest spender has been AIPAC’s super PAC, which has invested more than $7 million on ads and mailers.

For its part, DMFI PAC, which is also backing Bell, has spent nearly $500,000 in the race. “As voters hear from the candidates,” Mark Mellman, DMFI PAC’s chairman, said in a statement, “Democrats in Missouri’s 1st District are increasingly disillusioned with Bush and attracted to Bell.”

Cori Bush faces diverse coalition of opponents looking to oust her from office

The National Black Empowerment Action Fund, founded by AIPAC alumnus Darius Jones, recently began spending in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District to raise awareness around what Jones called Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-MO) underwhelming “job performance” on such issues as school choice, public safety and infrastructure investment.

The group’s move comes as outside spending in what’s expected to be a tight race has been quietly adding up. The Aug. 6 primary has become one of the most expensive of the congressional cycle, with more than $11 million in independent expenditures — fueled largely by AIPAC’s active engagement in the contest.

In an interview with JI on Thursday, Jones, who previously served as AIPAC’s national African American constituency director, said that Black Democrats are fed up with “extremism” among members of Congress who he claimed are not representing the interests of Black constituents.

“We also recognize that those same members within the Congress, and particularly within the Squad, tend to be the ones who are most overtly anti-Israel — and the ones who are engaging in rhetoric which further alienates and endangers Jewish people here in the United States of America,” he added. “That kind of a convergence of interests really is paramount in our efforts to try to get those folks out and to bring better leadership to Black communities.”

The group, which kicked off its new campaign early last week and will continue through the end of the race, is initially investing in the “high six figures” but could spend more “as resources permit,” according to a spokesperson. The effort, Jones said, includes digital ads, direct mail and door-to-door canvassing highlighting instances in which Bush has opposed key policies of the Biden-Harris administration while breaking with fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

In late June, the group commissioned a poll of 300 Black Democrats — conducted by Mercury Public Affairs and reviewed by JI — that showed Bush leading her opponent, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, by 13 percentage points (46-33%).

When respondents were informed of Bell’s “record on public safety and criminal justice reform,” a polling memo shared with JI notes, “the Black community splits evenly at 40%” for both candidates.

Other polling on the primary, including a recent survey commissioned by DMFI PAC and conducted in mid-June, has shown a close race between Bush and Bell.

Fundraising reports filed by both campaigns on Thursday showed Bell with a commanding financial lead — he’s raised a total of $4.7 million, including $611,000 between July 1 and July 17, as compared to Bush’s $2.8 million total haul and $235,000 in the period. Bell has nearly $2 million on hand, while Bush has $354,000.

Jones clarified that his group, which also worked to unseat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) last month, is not directly backing Bell’s campaign but is instead encouraging voters to consider Bush’s positions and to contact her office so she can have the “opportunity to respond to the information that we’re sharing.”

The largest portion of outside spending in the district has come from the AIPAC-linked United Democracy project, which has spent more than $7 million supporting Bell and opposing Bush as of this week.

Other major independent spenders include Justice Democrats, which has spent $1.5 million supporting Bush; pro-cryptocurrency PAC FairShake, which has dropped $1 million against Bush; the Reid Hoffman-funded Mainstream Democrats PAC, which has spent $875,000 supporting Bell; Democratic Majority for Israel, which has spent $475,000 supporting Bell; and the Working Families Party, which has spent $400,000 for Bush.

UDP’s ads largely blast Bush as an ineffective lawmaker, highlighting that she’s passed no legislation, missed a significant number of votes and voted against the infrastructure and debt ceiling bills. The ad campaign, which does not mention Israel, accuses Bush of having “her own agenda” that’s damaging to the district — a similar message to the one UDP deployed against Bowman.

“I think Cori Bush has her own agenda, and Cori Bush is her agenda,” one constituent said in an ad that recently finished running in the district. Another featured a construction worker who accuses Bush of failing to “deliver for St. Louis.”

Pro-Bell ads laud him as a reformist prosecutor, highlight his efforts to fight abortion bans and say that he will “deliver for us.” Bush’s campaign has questioned Bell’s record on abortion rights.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and other House leaders have endorsed Bush — in line with their unofficial policy of endorsing Democratic incumbents — but he told reporters on Thursday he’s “not currently scheduled” to campaign with Bush in her district.

In another boost to Bell, he picked up the “enthusiastic endorsement” of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday, which described Bush as “less interested in working [the federal government] system for the good of her constituents than attacking it on behalf of a small, hard-left klatch of lawmakers — ‘the Squad’ — who are good at getting headlines but bad at actually accomplishing anything.”

It described Bush’s stance on the war in Gaza as “outrageous”: “Bush’s tendency to equate both sides — and even to side with the terrorists, as when she cast one of just two House votes against a resolution to bar Hamas members from the U.S. — should in itself be disqualifying for re-election.”

The editorial called Bell’s stance “appropriately measured.” Bush, the editorial board said, declined its interview request. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment from JI.

Rep. Cori Bush draws ire of St. Louis Jewish community

During her time in office, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who is fighting for her seat in her Aug. 6 primary, has consistently ignored and rejected efforts from members of the mainstream Jewish community to communicate and connect with her and her office, six Jewish leaders supporting her opponent told Jewish Insider.

Bush is fending off a challenge from Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, who has leaned into support for Israel in his campaign and picked up the backing of national pro-Israel groups.

A group of more than 30 rabbis from the St. Louis area came together in March to write a letter condemning Bush and endorsing Bell, accusing the Missouri congresswoman of antisemitism and of having “continually fanned the flames with the most outrageous smears of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ as it has fought to defeat the terrorists.”

The letter follows one sent on Nov. 1, signed by local rabbis as well as the leaders of the local chapters of the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, J Street, Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Community Center, Hillel, National Council of Jewish Women and other Jewish institutions.

That letter condemned Bush for her comments on Israel, accusing her of a “lack of decency, disregard for history, and for intentionally fueling antisemitism and hatred.” Her behavior, the letter charged, “not only fails to advance peace, but it incites anger and the potential of further violence toward the Jewish community.”

Signatories to the March 4 rabbis’ letter supporting Bell described Bush’s response to the Oct. 7 attack as a breaking point in long-simmering frustrations with the incumbent congresswoman dating back to her earliest days in office.

“The groundswell is really taking place post-Oct. 7, because when you are basically siding with Hamas two days after the attack and calling out Israel and calling for a cease-fire when Israel hasn’t even attacked, the Jewish community at that point basically threw their hands up and said, ‘We’re not going to be able to work with this person. We need to find an alternative,’” said Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham of Congregation B’nai Amoona, a Conservative synagogue in the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur. 

Abraham organized the March 4 letter. Bush’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Jewish leaders highlighted Bush’s statements in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 calling for a cease-fire and blaming U.S. support for Israel for the Oct. 7 attack, as well as her votes against a resolution condemning Hamas and a bill barring Oct. 7 attackers from the U.S. as particularly offensive.

Bush was also the lead sponsor of an Oct. 16 cease-fire resolution which made no mention of Hamas or the hostages taken by Hamas.

“I’m hesitant to ever get involved politically because I’m going to upset one group or another,” Rabbi Yosef David, of Orthodox educational organization Aish HaTorah in St. Louis, told JI. “The difference here is that I look at Cori Bush and what she has done as being dangerous to the safety of Jews, both here in the States, as well as the safety of Jews in the Jewish state.”

David said that Bush’s public statements about Israel, accusing it of genocide and condeming Israel immediately after Oct. 7, ”amount to, practically speaking, a blood libel about Israel.”

“That’s beyond the pale, especially after Oct. 7,” David said. “That is putting Jews in actual, physical danger.” 

He also condemned her for supporting “anarchy” on Washington University in St. Louis and Columbia University’s campuses, backing anti-Israel campus encampments.

But the Jewish community’s difficulties with Bush aren’t new. Leaders said that Bush has largely refused to engage with the mainstream Jewish community since she first took office in 2021.

“Going back for the last four years, in general, Cori Bush has not been willing to work with the mainstream Jewish community here,” Abraham said. He said her staff has brushed off meeting requests by highlighting her relationships with far-left groups including Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow.

Abraham said the dynamic was particularly stark around Hanukkah last year, when the local Chabad held its annual menorah-lighting in downtown St. Louis. Bush skipped that event, instead attending a pro-cease-fire ceremony with JVP and INN. Bell, her primary challenger, attended the Chabad event.

Abraham said he was aware of multiple requests from the local federation and JCRC to meet with Bush in 2021 and 2022, inviting her to discuss Jewish communal concerns, which were refused. He said Bush had sent staffers to some events, but almost never appeared herself. 

Ze’ev Smason, the Midwest chairman of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), an Orthodox rabbinic advocacy group that leans conservative politically, said that Bush had also been slated to appear at the opening event at a local Holocaust museum, but didn’t show up. Smason is also the rabbi emeritus of Nusach Hari B’nai Zion congregation, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Olivette.

The federation declined to comment in the midst of the election, referring JI to the November letter.

“It was just a number of times where, over and over again, she wouldn’t support the Jewish community when all we wanted was to sit down and meet with her,” Abraham said. “We weren’t trying to even change her views, per se.”

Based on public information, Bush has met publicly just once with Jewish leaders in St. Louis, in 2022, sitting down with the local JCRC days before her 2022 primary election. The then-leader of the JCRC, Maharat Rori Picker-Neiss said that Bush’s views on Israel didn’t come up at the meeting. Bush toured the Holocaust museum and a food pantry during that visit.

Abraham emphasized that the meeting didn’t happen until her second year in office, that it was limited to a small group from the JCRC and that Jewish leaders were turned down when they asked for a follow-up meeting with Bush.

Bush has also refused to sit for an interview with the St. Louis Jewish Light, which multiple local rabbis cited as a point of concern.

“She has demonstrated a real lack of interest,” Rabbi Yonason Goldson, executive vice president of CJV Missouri, told JI. He said that his wife had reached out to Bush’s office shortly after she was elected to arrange a meeting between her and the Orthodox community in St. Louis. “There was no interest in that whatsoever.”

Rabbi Jordan Gerson, the rabbi of the Washington University Hillel, said that Bush has “abdicat[ed]” her responsibilities to her constituencies when they “offer opinions that are critical of her policies or her stances, especially on Israel.” Gerson does not live in Bush’s district, but the Hillel falls within it.

“Not only have they been dismissed, but they’ve been ignored completely,” Gerson continued, explaining that Bush’s office has often not even acknowledged receiving communications from those who don’t agree with her views on Israel. He said the Hillel’s executive director told him that she wrote to Bush four times, without any response. “There’s just no recognition of their viewpoint because it’s inconvenient for her.”

Rabbi Jeffrey Stiffman, the rabbi emeritus of Congregation Shaare Emeth, a Reform synagogue, told JI that Bush has not responded to any of his letters — either positive or negative.

“She has her own agenda and she runs on that agenda where there’s good and there’s bad — and the Jews and Israel are bad,” Stiffman said.

Goldson said he’s heard throughout the community that “the consensus is that she feels she doesn’t need us, and therefore she has no interest in establishing any kind of a relationship or really engaging in any kind of discussion about what our priorities are.”

Bush’s icing out of the mainline Jewish community carries echoes of one of the weaknesses that ultimately brought down fellow Squad member Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in his primary in New York last month. 

While the Jewish population in Bush’s district is smaller than in Bowman’s district, Jewish leaders supporting Bell said it could be heavily mobilized against Bush in next month’s primary.

Abraham, who organized the March 4 letter endorsing Bell, said that he was inspired directly by a similar communique by rabbis in Bowman’s district condemning him and supporting his primary challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer.

He and other signatories described it as a largely unprecedented show of unity from the St. Louis Jewish community, bringing together leaders across religious and political denominations. Abraham said still other rabbis expressed their support for the effort, even if they weren’t willing to sign publicly.

“It took Cori Bush to get individuals to simultaneously sign a letter who have never co-signed a letter before,” Smason said. “So I think that expresses what is an overwhelming consensus within the Jewish community, our support for Wesley Bell over Cori Bush.”

Abraham said many of the signatories are now actively volunteering with Bell’s campaign, talking about him in their congregations and inviting him to speak in their synagogues. Bell’s campaign is actively working to reach out to and mobilize Jewish leaders and voters. Smason said Orthodox rabbis have been particularly engaged in supporting Bell’s campaign.

Jewish leaders said that Bell’s posture clearly contrasted with Bush’s, including meeting with and standing with the community repeatedly at local events and in other settings, including shortly after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, before he had declared his candidacy.

“He’s actually listening to who would be his constituents, and that’s critically important,” Gerson said. “We need someone who can listen to both sides, who can discern reality from fabricated reality and really keep in mind the values of the people that they’re serving.”

Abraham said that Bell has shown up to “almost every” rally and memorial event the community has held since the Oct. 7 attack, as well as met individually with rabbis and other leaders in private settings. 

“He’s been willing to meet with anyone and everyone in the Jewish community, really every step of the way,” Abraham said.

Stiffman said that, a year ago, well before he ever entered the race against Bush, Bell had attended and brought his staff to a program on antisemitism organized by the local chapter of the AJC.

David said that Bell has “become close to the Jewish community” and praised his willingness to publicly stand up for Israel.

Some of those who signed the letter endorsing Bell acknowledged that they, and others in the Orthodox community particularly, have strong disagreements with Bell politically, but have been willing to support him anyway.

“Our community does not widely support the policies of Wesley Bell, but he has taken the step of showing solidarity with the Jewish people in times of antisemitism, which [Bush] has not done at all,” Goldson said. “He seems to be a person who has a measure of personal integrity.”

Goldson said that many in the Orthodox community are Republicans but plan to vote in the Democratic primary, which is permitted under the state’s open primary rules, because “the community feels very strongly that Cori Bush has no interest in us and has no business representing our district or any others.”

Smason offered a similar assessment.

“We want a legislator who’s going to do the nuts-and-bolts work of getting things done,” he said. “I disagree very strongly with a number of Wesley Bell’s positions… but he’s a person who I believe is a person of integrity, a person who has a track record as an effective prosecutor, a person who I think will be an effective legislator for the St. Louis community.”

Some of the leaders also criticized Bush’s broader approach to politics, which they said has prompted further division. They argued that she has prioritized her own national profile over serving the needs of the local community, like infrastructure funding — another issue that helped sink Bowman’s campaign.

“She sees her job as making statements, dramatic actions,” Stiffman said. “But in terms of getting things done in Congress, I think you need a more sophisticated person. And I think that Wesley has shown that he can do that here in the county.”

“I see everything about her as focused on inciting division and strife, and exploiting differences between communities,” Goldson said.