In Missouri, Cori Bush Fights for Survival Against an AIPAC-Backed Democrat

Days before she was set to face an AIPAC-backed challenger in an expensive and contentious Democratic primary, Representative Cori Bush of Missouri doubled down on the stance that has put her job in peril.

Standing outside an early voting location at a public library in Ferguson, on the same streets where she led protests for racial justice in 2014, Ms. Bush declined to call Hamas a terrorist group.

“We were called terrorists during Ferguson,” she said of herself and other Black activists who took to the streets after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white police officer. “Have they hurt people? Absolutely. Has the Israeli military hurt people? Absolutely.”

Most voters in this racially segregated blue city in a deep-red state are not talking about Israel’s war against Hamas. Abortion is illegal here, crime is high and downtown is made up of mostly boarded-up storefronts. There are more pressing concerns. “It’s not a priority for my district, necessarily,” she conceded of her pro-Palestinian views.

But it is her vocal espousing of those views that has allowed Ms. Bush’s more mainstream challenger Wesley Bell to make this contest competitive. It drew a super PAC affiliated with AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups into the race, where they have poured more than $8 million into attack ads against Ms. Bush and positive spots about Mr. Bell, transforming it one of the most expensive House primaries in history.

And the stance has made Ms. Bush, 48, a former nurse who was elected in 2020 during a national outcry over racial inequity, the latest member of the ultraliberal “squad” in Congress to face a mortal political challenge.