In Tuesday’s Democratic congressional primary, voters in Missouri’s first district will decide whether to re-elect moderate incumbent Congressman Wesley Bell or replace him with Cori Bush, the Democratic Socialist who was the district’s Congressional representative until Bell ousted her two years ago.

Alongside Michigan’s Democratic congressional primary, Missouri’s first district race has become a referendum on pro-Israel money in American politics. In 2024, in what was then one of the most expensive primary races in history, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated groups spent more than 8 million dollars backing Bell. Over half of all outside money spent on the race came from the United Democracy Project (UDP), AIPAC’s electoral arm.

Both Bush and Bell came to prominence during the Ferguson uprising, after the fatal shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer in 2014. Bush rose to prominence as an activist, while Bell became the St. Louis County Prosecutor in 2019, running on a police-reform agenda.........

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