The “squad” might be one member down when the new Congress opens next year, if a new poll is accurate.
According to the New York Post, the poll, by GOP-run firm Remington Research, showed “squad” member Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat. down by 22 points to Wesley Bell, a Democrat challenging Bush in the Aug. 6 primary.
Bell, the prosecuting attorney in St. Louis County, is drawing 50 percent in the survey of 401 likely 2024 Missouri primary voters.
Bush, meanwhile, took home only 28 percent. Former Missouri state Rep. Maria Chappelle-Nadal got 4 percent and 18 percent of voters in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District were undecided.
The margin of error in the poll, which was conducted Feb. 7-0 among 401 likely voters, was 4.9 percent, according to the Post. It was conducted with The Missouri Scout, a blog that focuses on the Show Me State.
📊 MO-1 — Democratic Primary
• Wesley Bell – 50%
• Cori Bush – 28%
• Maria Chapelle Nadal – 4%
—
Undecided: 18%• @missouriscout | 401 LV | 2/7-9
• Remington Res. Group (R) – #29 (2.6/3.0)https://t.co/8bmUdRMt7I pic.twitter.com/AFgdLRTKDI— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 11, 2024
The challenge for Bush comes after a problematic year for the “squad” member, which has seen her embroiled in controversies over her policies toward Israel and her personal life.
Perhaps the most stunning example of Rep. Bush’s support for Hamas is that she was one of two members of the “squad” — Rep Rashida Tlaib of Michigan being the other — to vote against a bill that would ban Oct. 7 terrorists or Hamas members from immigrating to the United States.
Would this make you happy?
She was one of 16 members who refused to vote to condemn the Oct. 7 attack, and is one of the loudest voices calling for Israel to declare a ceasefire.
Even immediately after the attack, the congresswoman’s statement was preposterously weak and an exercise in bothsidesism that painted the real villain as “Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
My statement on the ongoing violence in Palestine and Israel ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/NIt9G7aLMI
— Congresswoman Cori Bush (@RepCori) October 8, 2023
Josh Kraushaar, editor in chief of Jewish Insider, called the poll result a “[b]ig red flag for the far-left Squad lawmakers.”
“This data is yet another example why pandering to the left-wing radicalism on Israel in the Dem party is a counterproductive strategy for Biden,” he wrote in a social media post.
This data is yet another example why pandering to the left-wing radicalism on Israel in the Dem party is a counterproductive strategy for Biden.
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) February 10, 2024
Meanwhile, anti-Semitism and Hamas sympathies aren’t Bush’s only issue. She’s currently under a Department of Justice investigation for spending astronomical amounts of taxpayer money on personal safety, only for it later to emerge that she was romantically linked with her primary bodyguard, who received the lion’s share of that money.
That bodyguard is now her husband.
Her explanation for hiring her then-boyfriend?
“What was happening, there were a lot of issues with us retaining just good staff,” she told MSNBC’s Joy Reid.
.@CoriBush joins @JoyAnnReid on the DOJ investigating her campaign’s spending on security services despite the independent Office of Congressional Ethics clearing the matter.
Watch more via @TheReidOut: https://t.co/zU5cQEygc4 pic.twitter.com/N2tj59z4Ve
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) February 1, 2024
“We couldn’t pay the big costs for security like some of my colleagues are able to do. And so we went with what we could afford, and it worked out for a while, but then we started having call-offs, people just not showing up to work, people sleeping on the job, and so it was very hard for me to have security when it was unreliable.”
Long before the relationship had come to light, however, Bush’s over-the-top expenditures for security had raised eyebrows, particularly given her support for the “defund the police” movement.
Given Democratic dominance in Missouri’s 1st (Democrats have a 27 percent lead in voter registration, according to the Cook Political Report), the district has about as much of a chance to Republicans as it does going to the Libertarian Monarchist Party, so the Democratic primary is essentially the entire ballgame.
And, while Remington Reseearch is a GOP-linked organization and 401 likely voters is a small sample, Bell’s 22-point lead over the controversial incumbent is worth paying attention to.
Bush may be the most embattled member of the “squad,” thanks to her personal travails, but the poll underlines just how vulnerable other Democrats who refused to take a stand against Hamas’ terror attacks on innocent Israelis are going to be this fall.
The “squad” type of rhetoric plays well to college campuses and far-lefties — but for most voters, it’s a massive turn-off. Don’t be surprised if Bush isn’t the only member of the “squad” to find herself without a seat next year.
