Cori Bush for Congress
Democratic congressional candidate Cori Bush has a track record of activism and championing progressive solutions.
Nurse, pastor, and community organizer Cori Bush, of St. Louis, Missouri, stands at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic, international protests against police brutality, and a national struggle of working-class people. She has been a boots-on-the-ground activist since the 2014 Ferguson mobilization, and brought her life experiences to a run for Congress in 2018. Now she’s returned for a rematch against 20-year incumbent Democrat Lacy Clay.
As a Medicare for All advocate and survivor of COVID-19 during the public-health pandemic, as a Ferguson activist who’s protesting during another moment of national reckoning on systemic racism, and as a mother of two and an active member of her community focused on poverty in her area and the transition to online learning, Bush believes this is the moment to address the issues most important to her.
“My message is the same. It’s the times that have changed,” says Bush in an interview with the Prospect. “I’ve been true to myself since Ferguson … I didn’t change, and with me not changing people were able to grab ahold of this message, this message of equity and equality for our community and ending all of these racist practices in our communities.”
Backed by Justice Democrats, the same organization that supported successful progressive challenges to incumbents from Jamaal Bowman in New York and Marie Newman in Illinois, Bush is looking to replicate that feat in Missouri’s First Congressional District in the August 4 primary. Bush took about 30 percent of the vote in 2018. Clay has not just been in power for decades, but his father was also the representative for the district for 32 years before him. Bush was and still is running against a 50-year Clay family legacy.
In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fresh off her improbable primary victory, went to St. Louis to campaign and canvass for Bush. But voters still harbored doubts about what a freshman congressperson could do in Congress, especially compared to the weight of a household name like Clay.
Two years later, Ocasio-Cortez and fellow freshmen Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley have pushed the Democratic Party farther to the left and proven that they don’t have to change their priorities once elected. They’ve been joined in this cycle by Newman and Bowman, along with progressives like Mondaire Jones, who won an open seat in New York’s Westchester County.
“People are seeing that it’s not this impossible thing. And it’s not a one-off. Which is kind of what people tried to say last time,” Bush says. “People are seeing that Congress can actually affect regular everyday people on the ground here in St. Louis.”
Bush has a track record of activism and championing progressive solutions, from collaborating with Palestinian protesters during the months-long Black Lives Matter mobilization, where demonstrators were met by militarized police, to her role as a Nonviolence 365 Ambassador with the King Center, where she’s a presenter on nonviolent conflict.
“As the congresswoman, if something happens within my community while I am the congresswoman, Cori will still protest,” Bush says. “Hopefully, I won’t have to because I’ll be able to make some other type of change. But if that change is not there, and we need to protest, I will be the organizer, I will be the congresswoman-in-organizing.”
This is the same mentality Bush took to the streets of St. Louis this summer while marching for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The same week she was released from the hospital after coronavirus treatment, Bush was looking for a way to contribute to the movement.
“The thing is because Black lives have always been and are still under attack, and if our leaders won’t speak up and stand up in a way where change is actually made, then I have to do that while I’m running for this seat because I’m not going to change who I am,” Bush says.
Bush admits that some people have told her not to be as vocal about Black Lives Matter protests and to shift her focus while she’s running for Congress, but she resolutely rejected that advice. Bush believes that her engagement and connection to St. Louis as a lifelong resident is what makes the biggest difference between her and Rep. Clay.
“He comes from that era with a lot of politicians where it’s like kiss my ring, and I’m not that politician,” Bush says of Clay. “You don’t have to kiss my ring, we’re going to do this work together. I’m not trying to be better than you. I’m in a place where I’m able to help because the same things that have affected them, that affect you, have affected me.”
Bush admits that some people have told her not to be as vocal about Black Lives Matter protests and to shift her focus while she’s running for Congress, but she resolutely rejected that advice.
When Bush looks around the district, she sees problems that Clay hasn’t addressed during his tenure that she would prioritize. It starts with issues she’s talked about on the stump both for herself and for candidate Bernie Sanders: Medicare for All, criminal justice reform, and improving public education. But it also extends to the damage caused by Clay’s political donations, notably the payday loan industry.
Clay, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, is certainly not the most conservative Democrat in the House. He even supports the Green New Deal, sporting a large photo of himself and AOC on his website. But where his views are more conservative, connections could be made to his top donors. Clay’s top contributors this election cycle are the insurance, real estate, and commercial bank industries. The finance/credit industry is his seventh-largest donor this cycle, with a total contribution of $17,500.
In 2017, Clay voted to support legislation that would allow payday lenders to use triple-digit interest rates. In 2015, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch also labeled Clay “a particular friend of the payday lending industry’s cousins in the rent-to-own furniture and appliance business.” He was also nicknamed “Payday Clay” in a 2012 attack ad because of the industry’s large contributions to him.
These influences are visible in St. Louis, a city that makes up a large portion of the district and is severely segregated. Locals describe the difference as the “Delmar Divide,” and the term was popularized by a short BBC documentary in 2012. One side of Delmar Boulevard is majority-white, with a Whole Foods supermarket, a large shopping center, and household incomes more than double the other side, which is 99 percent Black, observably less developed, and home to many payday loan storefronts.
Bush has followed the Sanders-Warren school of low-dollar fundraising. She raised more than $230,000 last quarter, mostly from small-dollar contributions of less than $200 apiece.
“Unfortunately, he’s bought and paid for in many ways. I won’t be,” Bush says. “Our campaign is 100 percent people-funded and people-powered.”
When Bush gets animated, her voice takes on the cadence of a church sermon, hinting at her years of experience as an ordained pastor. When she talks about criminal justice reform, she grounds the issue in her own experiences of police brutality while demonstrating in Ferguson. And when she imagines herself as MO-01’s congresswoman, she likens it to her career as a nurse and then the manager of her medical team. Bush sought out those who were “vibrant and ready” for the role, someone who wanted to always keep up with the medicine and the latest procedures. She knew she couldn’t hire a “tired nurse,” who may be willing to cut corners. “We can’t hold a position and be tired of it. Let it go. Because it’s evident in the work,” she says.
When Bush talks about criminal justice reform, she grounds the issue in her own experiences of police brutality while demonstrating in Ferguson.
Bush uses her biography to explain her passion for change, but one thing people may not know is that she is following in her father’s footsteps. Clay may be the son of a 16-term congressman, but Bush’s father has also been a lifelong local elected official, and still is today.
Errol Bush is an alderman in Northwoods, where Bush also staked out her campaign headquarters. She grew up watching her father impact the community on a person-by-person basis. Errol Bush is also a lifelong community organizer and leader of several civic groups.
“That’s the example that I saw. I just always saw him giving and doing for this person or that person. And always him reaching one person or one family. To the point where I could see the change,” Bush says of her father. “I saw people come back to my dad and say that whatever he did for them changed their family.”
Errol Bush has also been her support system during the obstacles in her life. Cori Bush will often say while she’s campaigning that she “is the people that she serves,” meaning that she has also struggled as a single mother, a working-class woman, and a person of color in the United States.
“All the things I’ve gone through in my life and knowing that he stood up for me or helped me, and because of this particular person in this moment, I’m still alive today. Just knowing that we can affect people’s lives that much, and I’m not afraid to do it, I’m not afraid to be vulnerable to get that done. I’ll do it.”
