{"id":767052,"date":"2022-08-03T04:02:25","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T04:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=404281"},"modified":"2022-08-03T04:02:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T04:02:25","slug":"st-louis-voters-keep-cori-bush-as-missouri-democrats-choose-anheuser-busch-heir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/08\/03\/st-louis-voters-keep-cori-bush-as-missouri-democrats-choose-anheuser-busch-heir\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Louis Voters Keep Cori Bush as Missouri Democrats Choose Anheuser-Busch Heir"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Cori Bush<\/u> sailed to a comfortable reelection Tuesday night, sending a message that St. Louis Democrats are happy with their\u00a0nonconformist representative. Her victory marks a win for progressive incumbents in an election year that has seen them embattled by outside spending and little supported \u2014 if not outright opposed \u2014 by the party establishment. But progressives faltered statewide: In the open race for retiring Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt\u2019s seat, populist-styled Lucas Kunce lost the primary to Trudy Busch Valentine, an heir to the Anheuser-Busch fortune.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t like the fact that we don\u2019t accept any corporate money. They don\u2019t like that I speak the way that I speak because I came from this community and I sound like my community. They don\u2019t love the fact that, instead of being what they call dignified, I show up as a protestor, that I\u2019ve been on the frontlines forever,”\u00a0Bush told the crowd at her election-night speech.\u00a0“But our work isn\u2019t based on what they like. Our work is based on what folks need.\u201d<\/p>\n

A former nurse and activist, Bush gained prominence locally as the Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets in 2014, after Ferguson police shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. Since her election to Congress in 2020, Bush has pursued a confrontational style of politics that has rallied activists<\/a> but has often put her at odds with party leadership, becoming one of the only congressional Democrats willing to say \u201cdefund the police,” and bucking party leadership<\/a> in a row over decoupling an infrastructure bill from a wider progressive agenda.<\/p>\n

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Bush riled St. Louis’s old guard <\/a>two years ago\u00a0by unseating longtime Rep. William Lacy Clay, the scion of a political family. This year, in her first primary challenge as an incumbent, that old guard came gunning for\u00a0Bush in the form of state senator and minority caucus whip Steven Roberts Jr.<\/p>\n

Roberts\u00a0was fond of saying that St. Louis voters had \u201cbuyer\u2019s remorse\u201d over Bush, including in remarks to Fox News<\/a> on Monday. St. Louis Democrats, who broke for Bush by a margin of\u00a0more than 2-to-1, appeared to disagree.<\/p>\n

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Himself the son of an influential St. Louis businessman and former alderman, Roberts\u00a0was the face of a campaign that leaned on a pair of outside groups with\u00a0eyebrow-raising ties<\/a> \u2014 including one linked to his campaign treasurer and business parter, and another\u00a0funded by Clay and a company linked to Roberts\u2019s father. Despite the influx of outside spending, Bush carried an overall financial advantage. While she raised and spent well over $1 million to secure her reelection, Roberts raised less than half a million,\u00a0including a\u00a0$135,000 loan from himself.<\/p>\n

Roberts\u00a0faced scrutiny over public accusations of sexual assault by two women. Both women reported their\u00a0accusations to the police, but Roberts has denied both allegations, settled lawsuits<\/a> with both women, and was never charged. In the weeks before Roberts launched his congressional campaign, someone using an IP address on the grounds of the Missouri state Capitol repeatedly removed information<\/a> about both allegations from his Wikipedia page.<\/p>\n

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If Bush\u2019s primary<\/u> was about securing the gains progressives have made in recent election cycles, Kunce\u2019s campaign represented a progressive movement on offense. But his efforts fell short Tuesday night, as Busch Valentine claimed 43 percent of the vote to Kunce’s 38 with\u00a090 percent of ballots counted.<\/p>\n

A Marine veteran and former policy wonk\u00a0at the American Economic Liberties Project, a D.C.-based anti-monopoly advocacy organization, Kunce centered his pitch on his ability to regain ground with\u00a0disaffected working-class voters that the Missouri Democratic establishment is rapidly losing. By embracing calls for universal health care and swearing off corporate PAC money, he tried to recreate a populist progressive model that has fueled the surprisingly resilient careers of Midwestern senators like Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.<\/p>\n

His opponent was in many ways the perfect foil. An heir to Anheuser-Busch fortune,\u00a0Busch Valentine came under fire for her past participation<\/a> in the \u201cVeiled Prophet Ball,\u201d a white supremacist ritual that had for years been\u00a0protested by\u00a0advocates for racial equality.<\/p>\n

Throughout the race, Busch Valentine’s knowledge of the issues and commitment to Democratic priorities\u00a0were called into question. She botched an interview<\/a> with Missouri’s largest newspaper \u2014 which endorsed Kunce \u2014 and, in a widely shared video<\/a>,\u00a0stumbled when asked about her thoughts on the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United<\/a>,\u00a0which she had earlier campaigned on overturning.<\/p>\n

Despite her wealth and connections, Busch Valentine raised less money than Kunce, who brought in just under $5 million to her almost $3.5 million \u2014 $3 million of which she gave to her own campaign.<\/p>\n

In November, Busch Valentine\u00a0will face Michigan Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who\u00a0on Tuesday won the Republican primary, a race characterized by the leading candidates\u2019 pursuit of \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d credibility.<\/p>\n

Schmitt’s victory is a repudiation of Missouri’s Republican former Gov. Eric Greitens, who was seen as the frontrunner for the nomination in June but floundered in the final weeks of the race as the value of his MAGA credentials appeared insufficient to protect him from his unseemly reputation.<\/p>\n

While Schmitt campaigned on his defense of the former president as Missouri’s top prosecutor \u2014\u00a0citing lawsuits he backed<\/a> that aimed to force\u00a0the reinstatement of Trump-era immigration and climate policies \u2014 Greitens had long seized on the belief that he was Donald Trump\u2019s unspoken choice.<\/p>\n

The former president called the disgraced former governor \u2014 who resigned<\/a> in 2018 amid a variety of criminal investigations, including one for sexual misconduct \u2014 \u201ctough and smart\u201d last month<\/a>, and Trump\u2019s future daughter-in-law, Kimberly Guilfoyle, served as a national co-chair for Greitens\u2019s campaign. Schmitt\u2019s campaign, meanwhile, benefited from support among the Missouri Republican establishment, which sponsored a slate of GOP-backed ads highlighting Greitens\u2019s past scandals in the final weeks of the race.<\/p>\n

Schmitt also focused more of his messaging on his fierce opposition to abortion rights \u2014 which appears to have worked among a constituency celebrating the death of Roe v. Wade. His office joined an amicus brief in the case that eventually overturned<\/a> the abortion rights established in Roe.\u00a0(In neighboring Kansas, which also held elections Tuesday, voters rejected an amendment<\/a> that would have allowed state lawmakers to further restrict abortion rights<\/a>, which are currently protected by the Kansas Constitution.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In a sign of Trump’s central role in the Missouri GOP primary, the former president\u00a0dealt a death blow to the candidacy of a one-time frontrunner, U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, by\u00a0endorsing against<\/a> her last month,\u00a0though he did not\u00a0say who his choice would be. In a bizarre move on Monday, Trump made his final endorsement in the race: \u201cERIC\u201d \u2014 last name not specified.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections,\u201d Trump said in\u00a0a\u00a0press release, \u201cand I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!\u201d<\/p>\n

In a fitting conclusion to a contest marked by groveling to the former president, <\/span>both<\/a> candidates rushed<\/a> to lay claim to Trump’s ambiguous endorsement in the final hours of the race.<\/p>\n

The post St. Louis Voters Keep Cori Bush as Missouri Democrats Choose Anheuser-Busch Heir<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush\u2019s constituents didn\u2019t show \u201cbuyer\u2019s remorse,\u201d but statewide voters rejected populist Lucas Kunce for Trudy Busch Valentine.<\/p>\n

The post St. Louis Voters Keep Cori Bush as Missouri Democrats Choose Anheuser-Busch Heir<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7800,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7800"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767052"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768865,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767052\/revisions\/768865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}