Cori Bush was knocking on doors along Arsenal Street in southern St Louis where voters were not shy of asking hard questions of Missouri’s first Black female member of Congress. But none of them raised the one issue that looms over her re-election race like a spectre.
Bush might have been expected to cruise to victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Missouri’s first congressional district in St Louis as she did two years ago. But her path to re-election veered into rough territory after she characterised Israel’s assault on Gaza, following the 7 October Hamas attack, as a “collective punishment” of Palestinians and called for a ceasefire.