Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) lost her Democratic primary on Tuesday, shrinking the ranks of the Houses left-wing Squad and delivering another major victory to the pro-Israel and business-friendly groups that backed her challenger.

Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County prosecutor, defeated Bush. Since Missouris 1st Congressional District, which includes all of St. Louis and many of its northern and western suburbs, is overwhelmingly Democratic, Bell is all but assured of a seat in Congress come November.

Bells victory over Bush marks the second Squad member in recent months to fall to a challenger heavily funded by pro-Israel groups. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who, like Bush , ousted an incumbent in 2020, lost his race to Westchester County Executive George Latimer this past June.

Justice Democrats, the left-wing group that backed Bushs first successful run, cast the race as yet another referendum on the power of big money to decide elections.

This race is about the future of our democracy and the soul of our Democratic Party, frankly, Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, told HuffPost on Monday. This is a question about whether we want to let a handful of Republican mega-donors dictate the outcome of Democratic primaries, or do we want to move forward to elect more nurses and everyday people to represent the communitys best interests.

Bush, an ordained pastor and registered nurse, indeed faced a massive fundraising deficit. As Andrabi noted, Bell had the support of some local Republican donors and many national megadonors from both parties, through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Super PACs supporting Bell outspent those supporting Bush by a more than 3-to-1 margin . Spending by pro-Bell groups included about $8.6 million from AIPACs United Democracy Project, $1.5 million from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffmans Mainstream Democrats PAC, $1.4 million from the crypto-industry-backed FairShake PAC, and nearly $500,000 from the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC.

Bush made national waves with her July 2021 sit-in on the U.S. Capitol steps to draw attention to the expiration of the federal governments COVID-19-era eviction moratorium. Her action got results; President Joe Biden responded by extending the policy , though the Supreme Court stopped it a few weeks later .

Later that year, in a bid to shore up support for abortion rights, Bush spoke on national television and in a House hearing about her experience getting an abortion after being raped at age 17.

Bushs allies and she retains the support of many local elected officials see her as an authentic tribune of the Black Lives Matter movement , which was born in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014.

Unlike many other Democrats in Washington, Bush continues to embrace calls to defund the police.

Bell, who also got his political start during the Ferguson protests and unseated a more conservative incumbent prosecutor in 2018, has, by contrast, disappointed many of his former fellow activists. They fault him for declining to prosecute Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, and for not more rapidly reducing the countys jail and prison populations, even as he points to the creation of a conviction review unit and the expansion of drug diversion programs .

Everyone keeps saying they both come from the movement, said St. Louis Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, a Ferguson alum and Bush supporter. I would say theres somebody like Cori Bush, who was a front-liner, who was actually in the movement, and theres somebody like Bell who was using the movement as a stepping stone for another seat.

But Bush also had weaknesses that gave her ideological adversaries an opening.

DMFI PACs polling found Bush leading Bell by 16 percentage points in January, but still only getting 45% of the vote. By late July, the group had Bell leading Bush by six percentage points a close approximation of the final outcome.

There was clear evidence in the polling, she was very vulnerable, said Mark Mellman, president of DMFI, and a veteran campaign pollster.

Bushs vulnerabilities included her vote against President Joe Biden s bipartisan infrastructure law. While she and the other five progressives who voted against it say they meant to pressure Biden to pass broader social and climate legislation, attack ad s papered over those nuances to paint Bush as a party turncoat.

Perhaps trying to offset the impact of this vote, Bush erected signs claiming she had delivered over $2 billion to the district. But with an assist from DMFI, local TV station KDSK reported in June that Bushs team had counted virtually all federal grant and American Rescue Plan Act money that had come into the district during her time in Congress, the vast majority of which she had little direct role in allocating. Bushs staff later took down at least one of the signs.

In addition, Bush faces a Department of Justice investigation for improperly spending more than $750,000 in campaign funds on private security services from a firm run by a man who was her romantic partner and is now her husband.

Federal campaign finance law allows candidates to hire family members as vendors as long as they are providing an authentic service at a market rate. Bush, who says she needs private security due to the death threats she receives, insists that the business agreement is above board. The House Ethics Committee also recommended no charges against her in October.

But in leaked audio of a January meeting with some of her aides in which Bush pleaded for them to remain with her, she acknowledged the arrangement might look messed up to some people.

Ironically, former Rep. William Lacy Clay, who Bush unseated in 2020, elicited scrutiny for a similar practice, albeit without the justification of personal safety. His campaign had shelled out so much money to his sisters law firm for legal expenses, Bush was able to outspend him on television in the final two weeks of the race.