Just one month after a “Squad” member from New York, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, lost his seat to a primary challenger, another Squad member is looking to be on track for an embarrassing primary loss. That Squad member is Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who is facing a landslide loss in her primary race against challenger Wesley Bell, with local media endorsing Bell.
As background, Bush has been in trouble for a while. At the end of June, The American Tribune reported that USA Today reported that Rep. Bush “may be in trouble,” as a recent poll shows her down by one point, which is less than ideal for an incumbent. The poll to which USA Today referred found that 1st District primary challenger to Rep. Bush, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, had managed to skyrocket in the pools and overcome “a double-digit deficit in January to lead Bush 43% to 42%.”
Things got dramatically worse for Rep. Buch just weeks later, at which point The American Tribune reported that, according to the New York Post, Rep. Bush was in a 23 percentage-point deficit against her challenger for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District seat, St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell. Bell is up 56% to 33% in the primary race, and Missouri’s Democratic primary occurs on August 6.
Now, with that mid-July poll showing Rep. Bush down an abysmal 23 points, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has sided with challenger Wesley Bell. It did so in an editorial written by the paper’s editorial board in which it called for her time as a member of Congress to come to an end and for Rep. Bell to replace her. Its support for Bell came because of his promises to focus on matters like effective constituent services and passing laws.
That focus on passing laws likely comes because analyses of members of Congress have shown Rep. Bush to be one of the least productive members of Congress, with the op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noting that the Squad, including Rep. Bush, has become known for focusing much more on wining headlines than getting bills passed. The editorial board said, in the op-ed, in part:
“For the past four years, the district has been in the hands of U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat who has generally appeared less interested in working that 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,”
“Bush’s almost immediate induction into the small clique of progressive House rabble-rousers positioned her as a darling of fringe-left activists — and thus irrelevant to what actually happens in Washington. Bush voted against the Biden administration’s landmark infrastructure package — one of only six House Democrats to do so — to protest the fact that a separate social-spending package was stalled. That myopic stance helps explain why labor interests that previously backed Bush have moved to Bell.”
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So, it looks very likely that another Squad member will be out of Congress after the August 6 Missouri primary, with her loss coming despite the generally far-left inclinations of residents of much of St. Louis that would seemingly buoy her.