Democracy For America Progressive Group Backs Cori Bush For MO-1

ST. LOUIS, MO — Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee founded by former Democratic National Committee chair and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, has endorsed Cori Bush for Congress in Missouri's first district.

Bush is challenging Rep. William Lacy Clay, an 18-year incumbent in the state's primary elections next Tuesday.

"More than ever before, the fight for racial and economic justice desperately needs leaders in Washington who intimately understand the profoundly personal struggles of black, brown, and white working families, and that's why Democracy for America members are excited to support Cori Bush in her race for Congress," said DFA chair Jim Dean.

New York House candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was also endorsed by the group. Her recent win in that state's Democratic primary sent shockwaves through the party's establishment wing. She visited St. Louis in July to stump for Bush.

In her own primary race, 28-year-old Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned for Bernie Sanders in the last presidential election, unseated Joe Crowley, a 10-term veteran expected by many to be his party's next leader in Congress.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, many are calling Bush's run a longshot. An ordained pastor and a registered nurse, Bush previously lost a 2016 Democratic Senate primary to Jason Kander, who in turn lost to current Republican Sen. Roy Blunt in November of that year.

As a single mother, Bush says she has "felt the burden of being uninsured and the pain of homelessness." She has made raising the minimum wage, passing Medicare for all, and taking on student loan debt key campaign issues.

Those are some of the reasons for DFA's endorsement, the group explained.

"Cori Bush's championship of Medicare for All, tuition-free college, and a $15 minimum wage isn't just an academic exercise," Dean said. "Cori's support for a bold progressive agenda is rooted in her own personal experience watching patients she cared for as a nurse struggle to pay for medicine they needed to survive, feeling the weight of crushing student debt, and surviving months of homelessness when times got particularly tough."

A study funded by the conservative Koch brothers published this week found that a Medicare-for-All health care system would cost about $33 Trillion over 10 years. That's about $2 Trillion less than Americans currently spend on health care.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Bush has refused to take donations from corporations and their PACs. Perhaps because of that decision, her opponent has an enormous financial advantage, the Post-Dispatch reports, with Clay's war chest twelve times larger than Bush's.

But, progressive groups are working to offset some of that advantage. As a part of its work in the 2018 election cycle, DFA says it intends to raise and spend more than $12 million in support of progressive candidates like Bush.

Women like Ocasio-Cortez and Bush are increasingly finding a path to victory in elections that once seemed improbable. For example, voters in Virginia last year elected Danica Roem, the first openly transgender woman ever to be elected to a state legislature. She was one of 11 progressive women who unseated Republican men in the state's House of Delegates in 2017.

Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics says that about 600 women nationwide are running for statewide and federal office in the upcoming midterms — a record. But, the wave of young, progressive candidates also highlights a fault line in Democratic Party politics, between the centrist establishment wing of the party and those wishing for a bolder, more liberal agenda.

Patch reporter Danielle Woodward contributed to this report.

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