‘They are trying to buy this seat’: Can Cori Bush beat AIPAC?

Last month, pro-Israel centrist George Latimer beat Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary for New York’s 16th district.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent $15 million to help secure Latimer’s victory and now they have their sights set on Missouri’s 1st district, where Rep. Cori Bush is facing a primary challenge from prosecutor Wesley Bell.

Bush advocated for Palestinian rights on the campaign trail in 2020, and she’s been strong on the issue as a House member, making her a consistent target of Israel lobbying groups.

Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke to JVP Action Political Director Beth Miller on Bush’s record, Bell’s politics, and how much AIPAC is spending on the race.

Mondoweiss: I wanted to start with Cori Bush’s record on the issue of Israel and Palestine. Can you talk about why JVP Action endorsed her?

Beth Miller: Yeah, absolutely. Cori Bush has been one of the most consistent, strongest voices on the issue of Palestinian rights since she ran and got into Congress.

Her consistency has been really key. It’s why we are so proud to be supporting her, why JVP Action is so proud to be endorsing her and supporting her campaign, and standing alongside her. Since October 7th and since Israel’s genocidal assault and attacks on Palestinians over the last nine months, she’s been consistently and loudly speaking out.

But long before that Congress member Bush had been pushing for an end to the unconditional flow of U.S. military funds to the Israeli government. She has been speaking out for the rights of the Palestinian rights movement and activists, the right to engage in boycott divestment and sanctions campaign. She has been speaking out about the Nakba. She really has been across the board strong on this issue.

I think one of the things that’s really unique about the Congresswoman is that she comes to her positioning on this issue through her own experiences as an activist and as an organizer in St. Louis fighting for Black lives. She really dove into this issue when she was protesting the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson. In those protests, she was standing alongside Palestinian activists and organizers and neighbors who were with her in the streets.

Now what has become kind of a very well-known story is when police in Ferguson were shooting tear gas at black activists and organizers and protesters, Palestinians in Gaza were tweeting about how to deal with the tear gas. Through those moments of solidarity and speaking with her Palestinian neighbors who were showing up in solidarity in those protests, that was when she really started to learn about Palestine and about the Palestinian rights and liberation movement. And she has held onto that and really brought that local organizing and position of solidarity across marginalized and oppressed communities to her work in Congress and how she approaches this issue.

It is really is quite unique.

During Israel’s genocidal attacks of the last nine months, she has been leading calls for a ceasefire. She has been leading calls to stop the flow of weapons. She’s been unafraid to criticize her colleagues or members of the Biden administration, who are warmongering, at great personal risk to herself.

Her principled values and stances on Palestine have led to a position where she is now being attacked by AIPAC. This race is going to be critically important to protect, not just her and her seat, but also to send the message more broadly to other members of Congress that you can speak out for Palestinian rights, like she has been doing since day one. To send the message that movements will show up and protect your seat and that you will stay in in office and continue to be able to work.

Bush’s primary challenger is St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell. Who is he and what are his politics?

Wesley Bell is the county prosecutor and he ran for that position on a platform of saying that he would be a progressive prosecutor and he’s now running against Congresswoman Bush saying that he holds similar progressive values, but he is quote” more of a pragmatist.”

That’s kind of his angle on this. However, I think that what his career, his past, and how he’s acting now really shows us that he is, in fact, he’s a political opportunist who is not operating in any sort of consistent, principled, progressive way.

He disappointed many of the people who helped get him elected as a prosecutor when he failed to file charges in Michael Brown’s shooting and murder. He disappointed the people who helped get him elected for prosecutor by not upholding many of the progressive values that he said he would be running on and enacting.

Now what we’re seeing from him is that he has basically taken a stance on Israel that is incredibly hawkish, incredibly warmongering, because it means that he gets AIPAC funding and he is attracting that kind of money into the race that he thinks can help him win.

For that matter, he is getting money directly from Republicans and Republican donors. If you look back at his history, one thing that came out recently over the past couple months is that while he claims to be a progressive Democrat, he also at managed the campaign of someone who was an anti-abortion Republican. So, it’s very clear looking at Bell’s record in history that he is not, in fact, consistent, that he is not operating from a place of genuine principles or progressive values, but is rather a political opportunist who’s trying to basically go where he thinks the wind is blowing and where he can win.

So right now in this is a situation where you have a genuine progressive in Cori Bush who is being attacked by a fake progressive, Wesley Bell, and he’s getting GOP Republican dollars and AIPAC spending to try to oust her from Congress.

So there is really a lot at stake in this race because it’s very clear that he is not actually going to be fighting for what the people of St. Louis want.

Let’s talk about AIPAC. How extensively have they focused on this race? What kind of money have they spent on it so far?

AIPAC spending in this race has been huge. They are trying to buy this seat. They recruited Wesley Bell and they have directly raised over $1.7 million for him, which is a massive amount of money to be raising for a House primary race.

AIPAC Super PAC, which is ironically called the United Democracy Project, is on track to set records for Super PAC spending in Missouri. The PAC has already spent over $4 million attacking Cori Bush and supporting Bell. That’s on television, radio, digital, and mail. They are full-on smearing her in their attacks.

It’s worth noting that they actually got involved in this race earlier than most super PAC spending starts. They started around Week 10 of the race, which is what can happen when you have absurd amounts of money at your disposal like UDP does. Like I said, they are trying to buy this race by flooding the airwaves with smear campaigns and lies about Cori Bush.

It is very much worth noting that none of their ads are about Israel, none of their ads are about what they claim their core issue is. AIPAC’s mission is to solidify, continue, and increase U.S. support and military funding for the Israeli government and for the Netanyahu regime. That is what their core mission is as an organization, yet what they are campaigning on has absolutely nothing to do with that.

The reason is that they know that their issues are not actually popular. In fact, what Cori Bush is pushing for, which is a human rights and justice centered approach, where the humanity of all people is what’s centered, that’s what’s actually popular with voters.

So again, what you have here is a situation where AIPAC’s Super PAC is coming in and spending historic amounts of money to smear Congresswoman Bush and to support Wesley Bell without ever actually disclosing or talking about why they are doing this. On top of that, the overwhelming majority of that spending is coming from Republican dollars, which are meddling in a Democratic primary.

AIPAC spent heavily against Jamaal Bowman, who just lost his primary in New York. They stayed out of Summer Lee’s primary in Pennsylvania despite opposing her when she first ran for Congress.

I know they are very conscious of branding and optics and like to reference the fact all their candidates win, but can you talk about their decision to target Bush while staying away from other races?

AIPAC really does not like to look vulnerable, so they only decide to get involved where they think they see vulnerabilities, often on other issues that do not have to do with Palestine and Israel.

They didn’t go after Congresswoman Summer Lee because they they didn’t believe that she had vulnerabilities that they could exploit and they didn’t think that they could win, basically, in that way. AIPAC really likes to be able to say that all their candidates win. And those numbers are kind of skewed based on where they decide to get involved, where their spending is.

In Congressman Bowman’s race, which very unfortunately, AIPAC’s money successfully really had big influences in and we lost Congressman Bowman as a representative in the coming Congress. In that race, Congressman Bowman had also been redistricted several times and lost many from his base. Then when you throw into that, that AIPAC spent over $17 million, dollars which is a historic amount of money. They essentially bought that seat.

In Missouri, they feel that their money can go very far and that they can flood the airwaves and smear Congresswoman Bush. They believe she has enough vulnerabilities where they can buy that seat. I think that they’re wrong. I think that they’ve made a miscalculation here and that Congresswoman Cori Bush is in fact very popular in the district. Movements are going to be standing up behind her and supporting her. She has not been redistricted in the way that Congressman Bowman was. I think that they’re going to have a loss coming up in this race.

What AIPAC likes to do is pick members of Congress who are vulnerable for other reasons that have nothing to do with Palestine, spend overwhelming amounts of money, eye-popping sums of money to smear those candidates on every issue other than Israel and Palestine. And then if the candidate that they are attacking loses, they say that being pro-Israel is good politics and good policy, as though that’s what the candidate won on when in fact it had nothing to do with that. It had to do with their spending and it had to do with the ways that they were smearing the candidate on other issues.

So that’s kind of how they’ve been operating in the past. I think they’ve made a miscalculation and a mistake here and that Congresswoman Bush is going to be reelected, um, and will be able to send a message that, in fact, it’s being pro-Palestine and pro-Palestinian rights. That’s good politics and good policy.

Finally, I want to take a step back and just talk a little bit about organizations go about countering a group like AIPAC. We saw these numbers, that they were going to spend over $100 million on this election.

A few years ago we saw them develop a Super PAC to intervene directly in elections, but on the flip side we’ve also seen the emergence of groups like JVP Action and an increased presence of groups in DC who fight for Palestinian rights. How do you approach this fight when your opponents are operating with such vast resources?

It’s a great question. We will never be going dollar for dollar with AIPAC because AIPAC money is GOP billionaire mega-donor money. We are not trying to go dollar for dollar with them on spending.

We have people. That is where our power lies. It’s in our organizing. It’s in our people’s power. And that’s true across all the areas of how the Palestinian rights movement and broader progressive movements operate. It’s true across the board, but it’s certainly true in this fight against AIPAC.

They are spending like they’re scared. I think that that’s really important to clarify here. The fact that they launched a super PAC that is now spending at historic rates is a sign that they feel that they can only win if they are buying these seats. And that’s because they know that they’re losing on the issues. They are losing in terms of the popularity of what they are trying to say. Overwhelmingly, Democratic voters are more and more leaning towards supporting Palestinian rights and demanding that we stop sending bombs and weapons and unconditional military funding to the Israeli government as it upholds apartheid and carries out genocide.

That is the overwhelming trend in the base of the Democratic Party and AIPAC is trying to hold onto a grip over the Democrats by spending in these overwhelming ways and with eye popping historic sums of money. And so what we are trying to do is organize the mass of people power that we have to fight back. I think that what’s really important to say here is that we need to take this race seriously. As activists and as organizers, we cannot sit this out because AIPAC is spending and they could successfully win, but they only win if we sit this out.

If we show up, if we organize, if we fight back, if we’re phone banking, if we’re making calls, if we’re raising grassroots dollars, that’s when we win. It’s when we show up and we are organizing. It’s when we sit back and don’t volunteer and we don’t get involved that AIPAC could take this. So that’s going to be the key here. It’s our ability to mobilize our people that’s going to make the difference. And that’s how we can fight back against AIPAC and AIPAC spending. I think that’s important for all of us as movement organizers and activists to see this as one tactic, as one tool in our toolbox.

As part of the fight for the broader Palestinian liberation movement, there is so much that is so important. BDS, organizing our community, protesting, civil disobedience, all of these tactics are so critical. We also can’t abandon the space where we are trying to build governing power by protecting the people in office who are working to bring our movement demands to that space. So that means we also need to understand showing up for Congressman Bush’s campaign as part of that broader movement fight as well.