Cori Bush faces primary challenge as voters head to polls in Missouri, Michigan and Washington
Voters in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District will head to the polls Tuesday as Rep. Cori Bush fights to hold on to her seat in the Democratic primary against St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell, who is backed by a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. The race between two liberal Black candidates in this district gets to the heart of a fissure within the Democratic Party over the United States’ unwavering support of Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
While the vote in Bush’s primary will be among the most hotly contested on Tuesday, it is one in a slew of House, Senate and gubernatorial races playing out in Missouri, Michigan and Washington.
In 2021, Bush became the district’s first Black congresswoman after defeating Rep. William Lacy Clay, a centrist Democrat who had held the office for two decades.
Her opponent, Bell, is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), long considered to be Washington’s most powerful lobbying force, and he headed into the primary’s home stretch with a sizable monetary advantage. By the end of June, Bell had four times as much cash on hand as Bush. Outside groups — mostly the pro-Israel lobby, incensed by her pro-Palestinian views — spent more than $12 million in ads that attacked Bush and supported Bell, according to Washington nonprofit OpenSecrets.
As the Gaza war stretches into its 10th month, AIPAC and other groups in the pro-Israel lobby are fighting to shut down criticism of Israel in Congress by pouring millions of dollars into races against several members of “the Squad,” a group of House Democrats on the party’s left flank, who have criticized the Israeli government amid its war in Gaza. After the primary loss of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in June, Bush was their next target.
But at the heart of the race is a question of how voters want the Democratic Party to look going forward. The two candidates’ contrasting opinions on Israel’s war on Gaza, which is being waged 6,500 miles away, will make little difference in how most people choose, voters told The Washington Post. Instead, it has become a matter of style over substance, with Bell portraying himself as a more pragmatic choice.
Both candidates are facing allegations of improper behavior: Bush is under federal investigation over allegations that she misused campaign funds to hire her husband to provide security, while Bell is awaiting a civil trial over allegations that he fired people based on their gender, age and race. Both candidates have denied wrongdoing.
In a district Joe Biden carried by more than 60 points in 2020, the winner of Tuesday’s primary heads into November’s election as the strong favorite.
Democratic Senate primary in Missouri
Three Democrats are battling Tuesday in a race to determine who will face Sen. Josh Hawley in November. Hawley is running unopposed in the Republican primary.
Marine veteran Lucas Kunce is considered the front-runner against state Sen. Karla May and December Harmon, a community activist.
Wesley Bell had previously been a candidate in the Senate primary until he announced in October that he would mount a primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Cori Bush.
Democrats largely rallied around Kunce, who narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for Senate two years ago. He had a major financial advantage over May, raising over $10 million in his campaign, compared with just more than $50,000 that May raised this cycle, according to financial disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Missouri Democratic gubernatorial primary
Of the five Democratic candidates on Missouri’s gubernatorial ballot, the primary race is largely a contest between state Rep. Crystal Quade and business executive Mike Hamra.
Quade, who was elected to the Missouri House in 2016 and serves as its minority floor leader, a position she has held since 2019. Previously, she worked for a nonprofit dedicated to helping disadvantaged students in Missouri.
Hamra is the chief executive of Hamra Enterprises, his family’s business that operates several well-known food franchises, including Wendy’s and Panera Bread. He previously worked in the Commerce Department during the Clinton administration.
Missouri Republican gubernatorial primary
The three front-runners in Missouri’s GOP primary race for governor — Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel — align closely with Donald Trump’s policies, and each received the former president’s endorsement to replace the state’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, who is term-limited.
“All have had excellent careers, and have been with me from the beginning,” Trump wrote in a July 27 Truth Social post, adding: “Choose any one of them — You can’t go wrong!”
Parson has endorsed Kehoe, as have several agricultural and law enforcement groups. Before becoming lieutenant governor, Kehoe served on the state’s Highway and Transportation Commission and in the state Senate, where he was the majority floor leader for three years.
Ashcroft, the son of former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft, was first elected to the secretary of state post in 2016. In 2014, he had an unsuccessful run for the state Senate. Representing St. Charles County in the state Senate, Eigel previously served in the U.S. Air Force.
Democratic Senate primary in Michigan
One of the most closely followed races in Michigan is the race to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D), who announced in January 2023 that she would not seek reelection to a fifth term. The once-crowded race is now a competition between three-term Rep. Elissa Slotkin and actor Hill Harper, a first-time political candidate.
The open Senate seat in Michigan is among a handful expected to help determine which party controls the chamber next year.
Slotkin, who has consistently dominated the race, has a sizable financial advantage over her competitors, raising more than the rest of the Democratic and Republican primary candidates combined.
The former CIA analyst and Defense Department official, who is Jewish, has faced criticism in Michigan — home to the largest population of Arab Americans in the country — for not being harder on Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.
Harper, best known for his role in “The Good Doctor,” called for a cease-fire in the war, which attracted Arab American support in the state.
Republican Senate primary in Michigan
While Republicans have united behind former congressman Mike Rogers, who has been endorsed by Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the heavy favorite faces competition from underdogs.
Fellow former congressman Justin Amash and physician Sherry O’Donnell are also on the ballot. Entrepreneur Sandy Pensler also appears despite his withdrawal from the race several weeks ago. He endorsed Rogers — who previously served as an FBI special agent and chaired the House Intelligence Committee — at a rally with Trump last month.
Michigan Republicans haven’t won a U.S. Senate race in the state since 1994. And the race to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D), who announced in January 2023 that she would not seek reelection, could prove key in determining the balance of power in Congress’s upper chamber.
Michigan’s 7th District primaries
In one of the most competitive House races in the country, left open by Slotkin’s Senate race, both parties’ candidates ran unopposed Tuesday.
The table is already set for a November battle between Democrat Curtis Hertel Jr. and Republican Tom Barrett as the parties battle for control in the House, where Republicans hold a narrow majority.
Michigan’s 8th District Democratic primary
In another Michigan seat that the Democrats are forced to defend without an incumbent this year — following the retirement of Rep. Daniel Kildee — the competition is down to three.
Kildee, who served the Flint area since 2013 after taking over from his uncle, who served in Congress for 36 years, has endorsed state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet.
Pamela Pugh, the state’s education board president, and Matt Collier, the former mayor of Flint, are also battling for the party’s nomination.
McDonald Rivet came into the race just one year into her four-year Senate term. She said in an interview with the AP that Kildee called her and encouraged her to run for his seat.
Michigan’s 8th District Republican primary
Three Republicans are vying to flip this hotly contested seat come November in the wake of Kildee’s retirement.
Paul Junge, a former TV anchor, is making another bid for the seat after losing by more than 10 points to Kildee in 2022. Mary Draves, a former chemical manufacturing executive at Dow Inc., and Anthony Hudson, a trucking company owner, are battling him in the race.
Junge is a clear favorite for the nomination, having vastly outraised his opponents. This race marks his third time running for the seat. He previously served in the Trump administration at the Department of Homeland Security.
Michigan’s 13th District Democratic primary
In this heavily Democratic district, Tuesday’s primary is likely to produce November’s winner. Rep. Shri Thanedar is facing off with Mary Waters, an at-large member of the Detroit City Council, and attorney Shakira Lynn Hawkins.
Former state senator Adam Hollier did not qualify for the ballot after the Wayne County clerk determined in May that he had not collected enough voter signatures.
Thanedar, who was elected in 2022, faced a push from members within his own party to replace him in the August primary, spearheaded by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. Other state Democratic officials also threw their support behind Waters as a replacement.
Washington gubernatorial primary
When Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), the longest-serving governor in the country, announced he would not seek reelection, he opened the floodgates for more than two dozen candidates to compete for a spot on the November ballot. Under the state’s primary system, the top two vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party.
Polls show the two front-runners are state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) and former congressman Dave Reichert (R).
Ferguson, who received Inslee’s endorsement, served for a decade on the King County Council before his election as the state’s attorney general. In recent years, he, alongside several other Democratic attorneys general in the country, has pursued legal challenges against Republicans on hot-button issues including abortion and gun control.
A moderate Republican, Reichert spent seven terms in Congress before retiring in 2019. Before that, he gained national recognition for his work as a county sheriff in Washington, where he was on a task force that captured the “Green River Killer.” If Reichert makes the November ballot and wins, it would mark the end of a nearly 40-year dry spell in the governor’s office for the Republican Party, whose last successful candidate was John Dennis Spellman in 1980.
Washington’s 3rd District primary
This Republican-leaning district is set to be a key race in November in what local media has described as a “grudge match.” Democrats served an upset here in 2022, when Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez flipped the seat in the midterms. Now, right-wing Army veteran Joe Kent wants it back. Gluesenkamp Perez has drastically outraised her primary challengers and has a fairly direct line to November.
Kent has establishment support from the Washington state GOP but is facing competition from local legislator Leslie Lewallen, who has local GOP support. The latter believes she will be more palatable in the general election, pushing back on Kent’s election conspiracy theories and associations with far-right extremists.
Washington’s 4th District primary
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), the incumbent in the state’s deep-red 4th Congressional District, faces two credible challengers, both propelled in part by endorsements from Trump.
Having won reelection in the district since 2014, Newhouse on Tuesday faces off against Tiffany Smiley, a former Republican Senate candidate who lost to Sen. Patty Murray (D) in 2022, and Jerrod Sessler, who has never held public office but received an early endorsement from Trump. Newhouse is one of only two House Republicans who remain in office of the 10 who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Of the other eight, four lost their reelection bids during the primaries and four others retired.
In a dig at Newhouse in April, Trump endorsed Sessler on Truth Social, writing that the candidate has his “Complete and Total Endorsement — He will never let you down!!!”
On Saturday, Trump extended a late endorsement to Smiley, who he described as a “tremendous America First Candidate.” He added that Newhouse was a “weak and pathetic” opponent who “stupidly voted to impeach me for absolutely no reason.”
In 2022, Newhouse fought off Sessler and five other GOP candidates. Sessler is a business executive and Navy veteran. Smiley is a former nurse who has since focused on advocacy work for veterans.
Washington’s 5th District primary
After nearly two decades representing Washington’s 5th Congressional District, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) in February announced that she would not run for reelection. Candidates from both parties made for a crowded primary race Tuesday to replace McMorris Rodgers, who chaired the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee and was the first woman to do so.
With Washington’s primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes, regardless of party, will face off in the November general election for the district, which includes Spokane, the state’s second-largest city.
The top Republican contenders in the race for the seat are state Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber and Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner. Before Maycumber was elected to her Washington House seat in 2017, she worked in biomedical research and law enforcement and served as a school board member. Baumgartner, who is serving his second term as Spokane County’s treasurer, was a state senator for eight years and worked for the State Department as an officer in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Maycumber and Baumgartner face Democratic challengers Bernadine Bank and Carmela Conroy. Bank worked for decades as a gynecologist in Spokane and, in 2022, began working with the local Democratic Party. Conroy worked as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Spokane County in the 1990s before spending about two decades with the State Department in various roles.
Washington’s 6th District primary
With Rep. Derek Kilmer (D), who has held the seat since 2013, not running for reelection, the race to succeed him has two Democratic front-runners: Hilary Franz, the state’s commissioner of public lands, and state Sen. Emily Randall.
Each received high-profile endorsements from across the state and raised more than $1 million each. Republican state Sen. Drew MacEwan is hoping to flip the seat, which has been won by Democrats for the past 60 years, but has raised significantly less than his Democratic opponents. The race this cycle saw record-breaking outside spending, with a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC, Protect Progress, pumping $1.5 million into ads to support Randall.