‘I Probably Could Have Flipped Over a Few More Tables’
Rep. Cori Bush was swept into office in 2020 on a wave of liberal energy, defeating a longtime Democratic incumbent and cementing the notion of a rising insurgency on the left. Four years later, she was defeated in her own primary — along with fellow progressive firebrand Rep. Jamaal Bowman — amid a deluge of money spent attacking her, mostly by the pro-Israel group AIPAC.
In an exit interview with POLITICO Magazine, Bush defended her tenure in Congress and touted her accomplishments, including successfully pressuring the Biden administration to extend a pandemic-era eviction moratorium.
A member of the progressive Squad, Bush was targeted by AIPAC because of her outspoken criticism of the Israeli government and her push for a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. But she said the attacks were a “deception” since AIPAC’s ads focused on her vote against a bipartisan infrastructure law rather than Israel policy. (Bush and some other progressives opposed the infrastructure measure after it was decoupled from the broader social spending legislation in Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan.)
Bush leaves office with the Squad smaller and the American left facing an uncertain path after Donald Trump’s victory. But she said her progressive colleagues weren’t going to back down despite the latest defeats.
“Anyone who underestimates our power is severely mistaken, because we aren’t going anywhere,” she said. “And I will always be Squad. I’m not going far.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You got elected in 2020 after winning a primary against a powerful Democratic incumbent. Four years later, you were defeated in a primary by another challenger. How do you view your place in the Democratic Party?
I don’t feel that this speaks to my place in the party. This was primarily Republican money that was used to unseat me. I think this was deception by the people who wanted to oust me because they couldn’t even speak up for the issue that they claimed was the reason why they were challenging me. There was not one ad that they used to speak to their issue [Israel], to say that this is why they feel that I should no longer represent the people of Missouri’s 1st District.
I believe that I have a lot of respect from my colleagues and vice versa. I actually believe that I have grown in the party, as far as who people may have thought I was when I entered Congress, and who they’ve seen and who they’ve gotten to know.
AIPAC spent at least $8 million to defeat you. Do you wish Democratic leaders had done more to keep the group out of primaries this year or lend you more support?
Absolutely. At this point, yes, and looking forward, Democratic leadership has to do something. Democratic leadership must make the decision that this corporate money should not be able to be used in Democratic primaries. Because that was the deciding factor in this race.
Democrats have to ban corporate PAC donations, and specifically have to speak up and push to ban the super PAC spending in our Democratic primaries. That is the only way that this does not happen again, because I wasn’t unseated because I didn’t take care of my community. We brought over $2 billion to our district in four years. We helped thousands of constituents who reached out to our office to help them navigate federal agencies, whether it was housing or PPP loans, whatever their need was. Let me also add the eviction moratorium. It saved people in our district and around the country. That work was for 11 million people around this country to stay housed during the deadly global pandemic. And I still hear today from people around the country who say, “You were the reason why I was able to stay housed.”
Your fellow Squad member Rep. Jamaal Bowman also lost his primary. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost the race to be the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. Where do you think the Squad goes from here?
The Squad will keep fighting. First of all, the Squad is big. And I know we want to make the Squad just out to be a few people, but we don’t do this work by ourselves.
The numbers will be lower for the 119th Congress, but they will keep fighting for people who have the greatest need. They’re not going to change their priorities and what they believe. The number of people in Congress on the team will just be smaller. But they’ve never been silent. Anyone who underestimates our power is severely mistaken, because we aren’t going anywhere, and I will always be Squad. I’m not going far.
Do you think its remaining members will shift course at all?
No, I don’t. The one thing that we all had in common, or at least most of us had in common entering Congress, was to be authentically ourselves and to be that regular everyday person from our communities, because we felt like those voices were missing in the Congress. The voices of, for me, being the nurse, Jamaal being the principal, Alex being a bartender. I think that the difference is us wanting to remember who we are fighting for. I don’t think that will change.
What’s something you wish you had known going into the job?
I wish I would have known how expensive it is to be a member of Congress. It wouldn’t have changed anything as far as me running, but it would have helped me to be prepared for what life is like. You’re being criticized for having a lot of money while you’re figuring out, “How do I have a home in two places? How do I make sure that I have toilet paper in two places at the same time? How do I have all the things that I need in both places to bounce back and forth?”
I think that understanding how — at least as far as the Democratic Party is — seniority plays so much of a role in who gets what committee assignment, what bills are brought to the floor, just in so many different areas, how seniority plays such a major role. We have great people in the Congress who, just sometimes in my conversations, I hear this disillusionment, and some of it is because people are waiting their turn. They have great ideas, and they’re really remarkable in the work that they’re doing, and we need those voices to be represented. We see in the Republican Conference they don’t seem to go by seniority as much. I think that the Democrats, we need to pay attention to that.
How do you think the Democratic Party should change in order to win in 2026 and 2028?
One thing is to realize that the people of this country have spoken and are saying that we need to hear about the kitchen table economic issues, but we also need those things to happen. So speaking about divisions in our party — “Progressives have to understand, we have to do these things in an incremental way” — and people in our communities are saying, “Well, hey, I don’t have access to clean water.” And progressives, oftentimes, we’re shut out. Look at Build Back Better, and how much the Squad pushed for the Build Back Better Act. That was President Biden’s agenda, his full economic agenda, and we were pushing for that.
Had we achieved making Build Back Better the law of the land, I truly believe this last election would have gone differently. People received the child tax credit, and then it was stripped from them. Now I know that some things did change with IRA, but people still have not seen that investment. The one thing that I’ve heard more than anything, when I asked people who were Democrats who made the decision to vote for Donald Trump this time, so many of them said the same thing: “It was because I received a stimulus check with his name on it for $1,200.” People held on to “I got something.”
We could have accomplished so much. The Democratic Party should pay attention. The progressives are not the enemy. We are saying that we are regular, everyday people. We are hearing what the people are saying.
Do you see yourself running for any political office in the future? What are you going to do next?
The possibilities are endless. All I know right now is that I am not going anywhere. I’m going to keep fighting for the issues that I fought for before I ever entered Congress, and since I’ve been in Congress.
Running for office again is not off the table at all. I did not expect to only be in Congress for four years, and so I do believe at some point I will run again, whether it’s for Congress or something else, I don’t know. I don’t have any plans right now, but it’s not off the table. What I will do, though, is I will organize and I will work on the same issues and more that I started with before I ever made it to the Congress.
Do you have any regrets about your time in Congress?
I don’t really operate in regret, but I will say I wish that I could have pushed harder as it relates to our cease-fire now resolution, and done more to save lives.
I left it all on the field. I put my life and my livelihood on the line, because so many have lost their lives. I wish that I could have done more, and I wish that my colleagues who later have said, “OK, this is too much. It’s gone too far,” I wish they would have heard us when we first started to speak to this, because our work was coming from a place of wanting to save as many people as we could — the lives of all people, whether Israeli or Palestinian, people abroad and people in the United States.
I probably could have flipped over a few more tables.
St. Louis deserves the best, and if there had to be any regret, just that I won’t be back for the 119th Congress where I could have done so much more for my community, because the people have waited for such a long time to have this type of leadership — that person who will put their body on the line, will put their name and reputation on the line for them, and now they are about to lose that type of leadership.
Nicholas Wu is a congressional reporter at POLITICO.