2026-08-03T11:00:25.448Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/missouri-democratic-primary-cori-bush-wesley-bell
上月，众议员韦斯利·贝尔和前众议员科里·布什在一次联合电台节目中展开交锋，争论谁在两场毁灭性自然灾害袭击圣路易斯社区后为当地居民提供了最多帮助。
贝尔介绍称，2025年5月龙卷风袭击该选区后，他联系了州议会中绝大多数为共和党人的所有议员，为联邦紧急事务管理局争取到数百万美元拨款。布什则表示，2022年该选区遭遇洪水后，她采取了不同的方式争取资源：登上电视、广播和互联网平台发声。
“有人批评我总想着上电视，但我上电视都是在谈论圣路易斯，因为这是让民众了解灾情的方式，”她说，“你越是发声，紧迫性就越强，公众的关注度也就越高。”
这场交锋凸显了两位密苏里州民主党人在周二重赛之前的关键争论，也是本选举周期多个测试民主党希望在政坛看到何种类型斗士的竞选之一。在密歇根州，民主党希望保住关键的美国参议院席位，众议员黑利·史蒂文斯将自己定位为“实干家”，而她的对手阿卜杜勒·埃尔赛义德则以“名人”形象参选，在另一场周二举行的初选中，埃尔赛义德批评有数百万外部资金支持史蒂文斯的竞选活动。
但密苏里州第一国会选区的初选是少数几个选民可以直接对比议员政绩的例子之一：一位依靠舆论平台发声的进步派，和一位以务实派自居的温和派民主党人。
2020年，布什击败了任职20年的现任众议员莱西·克莱。就职最初几个月，她睡在美国国会大厦台阶上抗议联邦驱逐租客禁令到期，因此引发关注。她还因与其他五名进步派议员一起投票反对两党基础设施法案，以期通过乔·拜登总统的社会支出法案，而激怒了一些民主党人和工会成员。
贝尔曾是圣路易斯县检察官，2024年初选击败了布什。当时他以布什的基础设施投票立场为攻击点，并得到了与美国以色列公共事务委员会结盟的超级政治行动委员会“联合民主项目”提供的850万美元支持。根据竞选财务记录，该组织已花费超过300万美元支持贝尔的连任竞选。
布什此番复出之际，越来越多得到民主社会主义者组织和“正义民主党人”支持的极左翼民主党人在全国范围内的初选中爆冷获胜。“正义民主党人”支持挑战接受企业政治行动委员会资金的民主党人。包括布什与贝尔之间的竞选在内的多场角逐，都将以色列的坚定盟友与批评该国在加沙战争中行动的人对立起来。
“科里·布什是国会议员为社区而战的典范，”“正义民主党人”发言人乌萨马·安达拉比在谈及该组织首位招募的成员布什时表示。
布什和其他进步派人士，比如周日与布什一同竞选的在科罗拉多州击败众议员黛安娜·德盖特的梅拉特·基罗斯，都认为建制派民主党人未能尽一切努力挫败唐纳德·特朗普总统的议程。
这与两年前的情况截然不同，当时布什和来自纽约的进步派民主党人、前众议员贾马尔·鲍曼输给了得到“联合民主项目”支持的候选人。
“我们可能输掉了席位，但我们并没有失败，因为运动迅速壮大了，”布什说，“我上次在国会任职时，最艰难的事情之一就是我们的人数太少……但现在我们有了新的团队。”
活动家与立法者
布什和贝尔的政治崛起都始于2014年8月 unarmed黑人少年迈克尔·布朗被警察枪杀后，弗格森市爆发的反警察暴力抗议活动。
贝尔于2015年当选弗格森市议员。三年后，他击败了时任圣路易斯县检察官，后者拒绝就枪杀布朗的警察提起诉讼。
布什2018年初选输给了克莱，随后在2020年当选，成为首位当选国会议员的“黑人的命也是命”组织者。在国会中，她以反对驱逐租客的抗议活动迅速树立了活动家形象。
不久之后，美国疾病控制与预防中心发布了一项新命令，临时暂停在新冠病毒传播率高的县驱逐租客。
“感谢所有持续关注此事的人——尤其是@科里·布什，她深知失去家园的滋味，并将热情转化为行动，”时任参议院多数党领袖查克·舒默在X平台上发帖称，并附上了他拥抱布什的视频。
在反对堕胎禁令的行动中，布什分享了自己青少年时期遭受性侵犯后堕胎的亲身经历，并在2022年中期选举前带领巴士车队在该州开展宣传活动。
支持者认为，她的两届任期体现了民主党人所说的希望议员不仅要通过立法，还要做更多事情。但她的对手认为，她有时过于背离本党立场。
“当科里去到国会并决定投票反对总统的基础设施法案，因为她想让‘完美成为良好的敌人’时，她表明自己不是一名立法者，而是一名活动家，”圣路易斯市民主党主席、大圣路易斯劳工联合会(AFL-CIO)立法委员会主席肖恩·福斯说。
弗格森前市长埃拉·琼斯表示，她在市议会任职期间结识了贝尔，她认为贝尔比布什在任时更容易接近。两位议员在以色列问题上的对立观点并未影响她的决定。
“我远离那种政治，仅仅因为我的政治是地方性的，”她说，并补充道，“当身边有那么多需要处理的事情时，我无法想得那么长远。”
充满争议的重赛
本届选举周期中，贝尔及其盟友——包括“联合民主项目”——试图将布什描绘成一名受丑闻困扰的低效领导人。贝尔强调，她在国会任职四年期间缺席了近250次众议院投票，指责她无法与选区的选民和企业沟通，并批评她的竞选开支，包括支付给丈夫的安保服务费用，这一开支曾是美国司法部调查的对象。
“归根结底，选举是地方性的，这里的民众都知道，她在任期间不仅没有做好本职工作，甚至根本没有履职，”贝尔告诉CNN。
国会议员如果支付给家庭成员的服务费用不超过公平市场价值，就可以使用竞选资金向其支付报酬。布什表示，她在面临多次威胁后将安保工作托付给了丈夫，并否认存在任何不当行为。她称“司法部的调查没有任何结果”，国会道德办公室也驳回了对其竞选开支的调查。司法部尚未就此事的调查发布公开进展报告。布什表示，她缺席国会多次投票是因为两次感染新冠病毒和一场葬礼。
布什辩称，贝尔才是没有政绩可依的人。她指出了自己在驱逐租客保护方面的工作，以及与密苏里州共和党参议员乔希·霍利合作，为密苏里州居民争取《辐射暴露补偿法》下的资金。
该选区的一些人批评贝尔在去年龙卷风过后未能争取到更多资金。
“如果科里·布什需要的话，她会睡在白宫台阶上，以确保华盛顿特区了解我们这里遭遇了龙卷风，”圣路易斯市议会主席梅根·格林说，“我认为，由于他没有那种组织者背景或活动家背景，他不愿意以必要的方式利用舆论平台来为家乡争取资源。”
与其他不同派系民主党人之间的初选斗争一样，密苏里州的这场重赛有时也演变成人身攻击。布什表示，贝尔两年前决定与她竞争时，她感到被背叛，称曾将他视为朋友。贝尔告诉CNN，这是“用来博取同情的幼稚说法”，他们“充其量只是同事”。
“我每天醒来都在思考这个地区，而科里每天醒来都在想着科里，”他说。
布什予以反驳。
“我认为他每天醒来都在想着科里，”布什说，“‘科里做了这个。科里做了那个’，因为他醒来时想到的是科里，不过这也没关系，因为我是他的选民。”
Progressive Cori Bush seeks to return to Washington by ousting moderate Democrat
2026-08-03T11:00:25.448Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/missouri-democratic-primary-cori-bush-wesley-bell
Last month, Rep. Wesley Bell and former Rep. Cori Bush sparred in a joint radio appearance over who had done the most to help St. Louis residents after a pair of devastating natural disasters ripped through the community.
Bell described how, after a tornado hit the district in May 2025, he reached out to every member of the state’s mostly Republican delegation to get millions in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Bush said that after the district was hit with flooding in 2022, she took a different approach to draw resources: hitting TV, radio and the internet.
“I’ve been criticized for wanting to be on TV a lot, but when I’m on TV I’m talking about St. Louis, because that’s how people know,” she said. “The more you speak about it, the more the urgency is there, and the awareness.”
The back-and-forth highlighted a key debate between the two Missouri Democrats ahead of their Tuesday rematch, one of several races this election cycle testing what kind of fighter the party wants to see in office. In Michigan, where Democrats are hoping to hold onto a key US Senate seat, Rep. Haley Stevens has framed herself as a “workhorse” to progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s celebrity in another Tuesday primary, while her opponent has criticized the millions in outside funding helping her campaign.
But the Missouri 1st Congressional District primary is one of the rare examples in which voters can directly compare the records of lawmakers — a progressive who relies on the bully pulpit and a more moderate Democrat who runs as a pragmatist.
Bush, who beat 20-year incumbent Rep. Lacy Clay in 2020, made waves in her first months in office when she slept on the steps of the US Capitol to protest an expiration of a federal eviction moratorium. She also angered some Democrats and union members when she was among six progressive lawmakers who voted against a bipartisan infrastructure bill in a bid to pass President Joe Biden’s social spending legislation.
Bell, a former St. Louis County prosecutor, defeated Bush in the 2024 primary, in which he pointed to the infrastructure vote and was boosted by $8.5 million from United Democracy Project, a super PAC allied with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group has spent more than $3 million backing Bell’s reelection bid, according to campaign finance records.
Bush’s reemergence comes as a growing number of far-left Democrats backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats, which supports challenges to Democrats who accept corporate PAC money, have won upset victories in primaries across the country. Several races, including the one between Bush and Bell, have pitted staunch allies of Israel against critics of the country’s actions in the war in Gaza.
“Cori Bush was the model for what it looks like to be a fighter for your community as a member of Congress,” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, said of Bush, the group’s first recruit.
Bush and other progressives such as Melat Kiros, who defeated Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado and campaigned with Bush on Sunday, have argued that establishment Democrats are failing to do everything they can to defeat President Donald Trump’s agenda.
It’s a stark turnaround from two years ago, when Bush and former Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a progressive Democrat from New York, lost to United Democracy Project-backed candidates.
“We may have lost the seats, but we didn’t lose, because the movement grew quickly,” Bush said. “One of the things that was very tough when I was in Congress last time was that there just was not enough of us … but now we have a new team.”
The activist and the legislator
Both Bush’s and Bell’s political rises date to the anti-police-brutality protests in Ferguson after Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot and killed by a police officer in August 2014.
Bell was elected to the Ferguson City Council in 2015. Three years later, he defeated the incumbent St. Louis County prosecutor, who declined to file charges against the police officer who killed Brown.
Bush lost to Clay in the 2018 primary, before going on to become the first Black Lives Matter organizer elected to Congress after winning in 2020. In Congress, she quickly made her mark as an activist with her anti-evictions protest.
Soon after, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new order temporarily halting evictions in counties with high rates of Covid-19 transmission.
“Thank you to everyone who kept a spotlight on this—particularly @CoriBush who understands what it’s like to lose your home and turned passion into action,” then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X, alongside a video of him hugging Bush.
In Bush’s efforts to oppose abortion bans, she shared her own story of having an abortion after being sexually assaulted as a teenager and led a bus tour through the state ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Supporters argue her two terms in office exemplified what Democrats mean when they say they want a lawmaker to do more than pass legislation. But her opponents argue that she at times went too far to buck the party.
“When Cori went up there and decided that she was going to vote against the president’s infrastructure bill because she wanted to let the perfect be the enemy of good, she showed that she’s not a legislator, she’s an activist,” said Sean Fauss, the chair of the St. Louis City Democratic Party and the Greater St. Louis AFL-CIO legislative committee.
Ella Jones, the former mayor of Ferguson, said she got to know Bell when they served together on the City Council and she finds him to be more accessible than Bush was in office. The two lawmakers’ opposing views on Israel don’t play into her decision.
“I stay away from that politics, simply because my politics is local,” she said, adding, “I can’t get that far out when there’s so much around me that needs to be taken care of.”
A contentious rematch
This cycle, Bell and his allies — including the United Democracy Project — have sought to portray Bush as an ineffective leader plagued by scandals. Bell has emphasized that she missed nearly 250 House votes during her four years in Congress, accused her of being inaccessible to voters and businesses in the district, and criticized her campaign spending, including payments to her husband for security services that were the subject of a Justice Department investigation.
“The bottom line is, elections are local, and folks here on the ground know that when she was in office, not only did she not do the job, she didn’t show up for the job,” Bell told CNN.
Members of Congress are allowed to use campaign funds to pay family members for providing services to the campaign if the payments don’t exceed fair market value. Bush has said she entrusted her husband with her security after facing multiple threats and has denied any wrongdoing. She said “nothing came of” the Justice Department investigation and that the Office of Congressional Conduct dismissed its investigation of her campaign spending. The Justice Department has not given a public update on its investigation into the matter. Bush said she missed several votes in Congress because of two bouts of Covid-19 and a funeral.
Bush has argued that Bell is the one who doesn’t have a record to run on. She pointed to her work on eviction protections, as well as her work with Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, on getting funding for Missouri residents under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
Some in the district have criticized Bell for not doing enough to get more funding in the wake of last year’s tornado.
“Cori Bush would be sleeping on the steps of the White House if she needed to, to make sure that Washington, DC, understood that we had a tornado here,” said Megan Green, the president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. “I think because he doesn’t have that organizer background or that activist background, he’s just not willing to use the bully pulpit in the way that it needs to be used to get resources home.”
Like other primary battles between different strains of Democrats, the Missouri rematch has at times become personal. Bush has said she felt betrayed by Bell when he decided to run against her two years ago, saying that she considered him a friend. He told CNN that was “a childish narrative that’s been put out there to gain sympathy” and that they were “colleagues at best.”
“As I wake up every day thinking about this region, Cori wakes up every day thinking about Cori,” he said.
Bush pushed back.
“I think he wakes up every day thinking about Cori,” Bush said. “’Cori did this. Cori did that,’ because he thinks about Cori when he wakes up, which is OK though, because I’m his constituent.”