22 minute read
Feature: Cori Bush
On primary night two years ago, Cori Bush wiped away tears, climbed on the stage of a strip mall comedy club reserved for the evening and thanked everyone who had supported her campaign. The watch party that began “I think I was kind of in a U City with the buzz of nervous optibubble,” Hendrix says now. “But I mism had shifted over a couple was also really hopeful.” of hours to despair as vote totals In retrospect, that loss to Clay pinged across phones and lapin 2018 feels like just another plot tops, showing U.S. Representative point in a steady progression toLacy Clay steamrolling toward his ward Bush’s headline-grabbing tenth term in Congress. victory last week in the rematch “The results came in, and it was against the congressman. But that like the air was taken away from night in 2018, when the Laugh us,” recalls Anthony Sanders, 53, Lounge turned suddenly somwho had been a Bush volunteer ber and heartbroken supporters since her 2016 run for the U.S. wept in their seats, there was no Senate. guarantee that the nurse-turnedFew had expected much out of candidate had any political futhe Senate race. Bush was taking ture at all. She had thrown everyon Democratic golden boy Jason thing she had against Clay, and he Kander, who at the time was the walked away smiling. Missouri secretary of state and “Usually when you run the secmuch discussed as a presidenond time, you do worse,” St. Louis tial contender in the future. So University political science prowhen she finished in distant secfessor Kenneth Warren says. ond, less than four points ahead But over the following months, of Chief Wana Dubie, no one was Bush and her supporters looked too hurt. But in 2018, she had leat the 53,250 votes cast in her fagit buzz. Less than two months vor, the connections she’d made earlier, a 28-year-old bartender through the district, the national named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez profile they’d built ȃ and they behad shocked the world by knockgan to envision a different ending ing out a seemingly untouchable to a potential rematch with Clay. New York congressman. AOC had “You don’t beat a giant with one visited St. Louis after her victory punch,” Hendrix says, “and that and campaigned for Bush, and was definitely a giant.” the supporters packed into the Laugh Lounge had hoped to witness a second strike of political lightning. But Clay was even stronger than they imagined, winning by nearly I t’s true that Lacy Clay is a giant of Missouri politics ȃ ten straight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, seventeen years in state legislature betwenty points. fore that, chair of a subcommittee BY DOYLE MURPHY “I think we were devastated,” for the U.S. House Committee on Kristine Hendrix says. “I was devFinancial Services. It is also true astated. I cried.” that he stands on the shoulders Hendrix had met Bush as a fellow of another giant, his father. When activist in Ferguson after eighteenWilliam “Bill” Clay decided after year-old Michael Brown was killed 32 years in Congress to step aside in 1 by a white police officer. in 2000, residents of Missouri’s And the two were part of a wave of First Congressional District made protesters to cross over as political the easy transition to voting for candidates. +endrix was the first his son. to break through, winning a seat By then, the elder Clay had built on University City’s school board an impressive political machine. in 2015 and again four months beHis power was derived from his fore Bush’s primary against Clay. early roots in city politics and acShe thought Bush had a real shot. tivism, cementing his bona fides
as a fighter and civil rights leader during the Jefferson Bank protests of 1963 when he was arrested and jailed in the city Workhouse for more than 100 days. He was a St. Louis alderman at the time, and even after decamping to Washington, D.C., he kept a close watch on local politics all the way down to the committeeman level.
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“He had a very well-oiled organization,” says Warren, who helped Bill Clay write one of his many books and got to know the family. “He knew everyone in his district.”
As a U.S. representative, he cofounded the Congressional Black Caucus, which became an established source of political muscle. And when upstart politicians such as Bush started to primary incumbent Democrats, including his caucus member son, Bill Clay wasn’t pleased. After the vote in 2018, he chided them in a newspaper interview for challenging sitting Democrats at a time when the party’s top enemies were Donald Trump and his enablers.
“They are attacking Democrats instead of going after the Republicans who sit there in the Congress and let this idiot in the White House do what he wants to do,” the elder Clay told St. Louis PostDispatch veteran political reporter Chuck Raasch less than a week after the 2018 primary.
When it came to his son’s victory over Bush, Bill Clay offered an assessment that seemed as much a warning to would-be challengers as it was political analysis.
“What it says is that an outsider like that can’t come into our district anymore and dictate what is going to be,” he told Raasch. “(Ocasio-Cortez) is the party of Bernie Sanders. She went across the country, he did too, and the results have shown they didn’t influence too many people.”
One of the problems with launching a rematch campaign is trying not only to rekindle the energy of supporters, but to increase it and draw in more. That’s tough to do after even a close race. After a blowout by nearly twenty points? Almost impossible.
Anthony Sanders, the longtime volunteer, says he signed on to help once again, but he was wary
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after the 2018 defeat.
“I went to [Bush] and I told her, ‘I’m going to put my heart into this, but after this, I’ll have to move on to something else, because I just don’t believe that the people of St. Louis are ready for change,’” he says.
But Bush got a huge boost in January 1 , five months after she’d lost to Clay, when the documentary Knock Down the House premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was an instant success, winning the Festival Favorite $ward. 7he film trails four underdog congressional candidates, including Ocasio-Cortez and Bush, through the 2018 primary. Weeks after the film’s debut, Deadline reported that 1etflix had bought the rights for $10 million, believed to be a Sundance record at the time.
Much of the buzz centered on Ocasio-Cortez, the only one of the four featured candidates to win her race. But Bush and St. Louis were treated to serious screen time. :hen 1etflix released the documentary to the streaming world that May, the effect was nearly instantaneous.
“I think the campaign started feeling different after Knock Down the House,” says Sanders, who had already noticed an influx of talented young staffers and volunteers. “Once that made it to 1etflix, everything changed. , think it was a game changer.”
It wasn’t just name recognition — although campaign workers say it made a huge difference. It personalized Bush and gave her a forum to explain her reasons for running. She had always had a compelling backstory as a single mom who had lived out of her Ford Explorer for a time and worked low-wage jobs to support her kids, eventually earning a nursing degree. But many residents in the district — if they Nnew her ȃ Nnew her for fiery speeches during protests. That changed when Knock Down the House started streaming.
“When I started knocking doors for this race, people were like, ‘Oh, I saw you in that movie,’” Bush told St. Louis On the Air host Sarah Fenske last week.
It was also a fundraising boon. Clay still took in more money — $740,500 to her $562,300 — but Bush raised more than four times the amount she did during the 2018 primary. And she was backed by the increasingly powerful liberal political action committee Justice Democrats, which
Cori Bush marches in 2017 with the family Anthony Lamar Smith, a Black man killed by a white St. Louis police o cer. | DOYLE MURPHY
had supported her and OcasioCortez during the 2018 run. Add in new connections she made as a Bernie Sanders surrogate during his presidential campaign, and she had the kind of resources she could only dream about during the first tangle with &lay.
That meant mailers, billboards and even television ads. Pairing financial resources with %ush’s high-energy, hit-the-streets approach gave her a certain ubiquitousness that’s tough for a challenger to pull off.
“Cori was at your door,” says Sanders, the volunteer. “Cori was in your mailbox. Cori was on your phone.”
The coronavirus wreaked havoc on political campaigns. Big rallies were out. Even small gatherings were out. So was knocking on doors and making those face-to-face connections that drive many an underdog’s campaign.
Bush’s team still hit the streets, but they set up wellness checks for vulnerable people in the district and dropped fliers instead of trying to talk to people in person — a move designed to reinforce the idea that they still cared enough to come to voters but also respected their safety.
Bush became sick herself in late March. Diagnosed with pneumonia, she was admitted to the hospital twice with coronavirus-like symptoms. A test for the virus came back negative, The New York Times reported, but the illness knocked her off the campaign trail for weeks.
When she returned, she used her own experience to talk about key themes of her platform, including making sure that everyone has health insurance and that the poor and working class can earn a living wage so they can weather emergencies.
Clay had pushed many of the same platforms and could point to a long voting record of backing progressive causes.
“No one voted more liberally than Lacy Clay,” says Warren, the political science professor. “He had one of the highest liberal ratings in the almanac.”
He also had the experience and connections to party leadership that take time to build and can be crucial to passing legislation. During the campaign, he referenced his role in landing a massive new campus for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a $1.75 billion construction project billed as the largest federal investment in St. Louis history.
But Clay couldn’t relate in the same way as Bush to people in the district who are struggling with the financial fallout of the pandemic. He couldn’t speak to life as a single parent or being homeless. Highlighting the disconnect, fliers attacking Bush chastised her for being evicted three times. Her campaign fired bacN, painting the attacN as particularly callous and tone-deaf when experts say the United States is facing an eviction crisis on a scale unseen in generations.
And then there were the protests. Clay had been criticized for a lack of presence in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown, and when demonstrations spread across the nation in May after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, it was Bush, not Clay, who led activists in the streets. It wasn’t just longtime protesters seeing her. The killing of Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Louisville drew diverse crowds, people who’d never been to a protest in their lives. For a candidate who was a protester before she was a politician, it was a big moment.
“She was being herself,” says Kristine Hendrix, now the school board president in University City and co-chair of Bush’s campaign. “What better way to introduce an activist?”
On Aug. 4, Bush’s supporters prepared for another primary night watch party. There would be no blowout at a comedy club this time. (For one thing, the Laugh Lounge shut down in Florissant.) Instead, a small number of campaign workers and journalists gathered, mostly outside at her campaign headquarters in Northwoods while volunteers logged on to a Zoom videoconference to watch together remotely — another concession to the ongoing pandemic.
Again, they were hopeful, but the surprise and heartache of 2018 still loomed in the back of their minds. If they were nervous about a repeat of two years ago, it turned to full-blown fright when absentee ballots came back showing Clay with a wide lead. Sanders has been around politics long enough to know what that means in a typical election.
“Those absentee ballots really scared me,” he says.
But 2020 has been anything but a typical year, and as the tally of inperson votes began to pour in from precincts through the district, they soon had reason to cheer. The more votes came in, the better the news. Clay managed to hold an edge in the county, but the city — where %ill &lay assembled the first blocNs of his dynasty — went for Bush.
Chants of “You about to lose yo’ job, Lacy Clay,” began to cut through the Northwoods headquarters. And then it was over. Two years after getting pummeled by nearly twenty points, Bush had won.
“She won! She won!” Hendrix, recounting the scene, says they yelled. “We were, like, screaming, falling on the floor.”
Two days after the primary, Cori Bush joined St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and city Treasurer Tishaura Jones in front of the Gateway Arch to celebrate what Jones called a dose of “Black girl magic” at the polls.
All three faced serious challenges in rematch races — and were largely underestimated. Jones dropped her frequent critic Jeffrey Boyd, alderman for the 22nd Ward, in the latest round of a feud that extends back through a mayoral election in 2017 and a treasurer’s race before that. Gardner, who was attacked by a phalanx of big-name Republicans (and noname acolytes who sent anonymous death threats), starting with Trump, dominated her race with 60 percent of the vote. And then there was Bush.
“I think many of you,” she began, “it didn’t cross your mind
that I would actually win ... but guess what? St. Louis spoke.”
Warren, the SLU political science professor, says he certainly didn’t think she would win. In decades of watching the Clays control the district, he has seen challengers come and go. Incumbents are inherently tough to beat if they win their sophomore campaigns and stay free of major scandal. Add in a family dynasty and a solidly Democratic district, and Warren didn’t expect much from the latest hype over a Clay challenger.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that story for decades,’” he says. “I’ve heard that question from reporters, ‘Is this candidate going to beat Clay?’ And it’s a big yawn.”
He hasn’t done a full postmortem on the race yet, but when he goes into the district to talk to people about what happened, he expects he’ll hear that Clay took voters for granted. Gone are the days of %ill &lay or his trusted office manager scrutinizing the inner workings of the machine, keeping committeemen in line. The Clays, for all intents and purposes, are better rooted in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland these days. Warren thinks Lacy Clay simply became too comfortable.
“I would say the Clay machine has died,” he says. %ush is the one who finished it off. She still faces plenty of doubts about whether she can transition from powerhouse campaigner and activist to effective legislator. She has momentum and is already being described as the newest member of “The Squad” — the bloc of young, progressive, female congresswomen of color that includes Ocasio-Cortez. But Bush will still be in a new world and on the outside of the established party. She’s still a long shot to accomplish all the promises she’s made, but she says she is ready.
“Just because it has not been done,” Bush said that afternoon in front of the Arch, “does not mean it shouldn’t be done.” n
When you cross the Mississippi River and enter East St. Louis from Interstate 55, the streets are filled with potholes until you reach Kansas Avenue, a portion of which is Nnown as Miles Davis Way and has a smooth surface liNe the sound of the Ma]] legend’s album Ȋ.ind of %lue.” 7he small stretch of nice road sits before the +ouse of Miles, the late trumpeter’s teenage home, which has been repurposed into a nonprofit museum and cultural arts center with educational programs for children and teens.
The founders have faced some questions over their motivations for renovating what was a dilapidated property with little sign of Davis ȃ who lived there from 1 to 1 . %ut they have since filled it with art dedicated to Davis and staged cultural programs for youth in the povertystricken area.
And now they are working with a $5, capital improvement grant from the state of ,llinois, so once the threat of the coronavirus subsides, they hope to be able to welcome the public to an artistic hub.
Ȋ,t’s not Must about education and music; it’s about how you build,” says J. *ary 3earson, who cofounded the museum with fellow (ast 6t. /ouis resident /auren 3arNs. ȊYou build methodically. :e were instrumental in them repair
Building the House of
J. Gary Pearson and Lauren Parks are the founders of the House of Miles in East St. Louis. | ERIC BERGER
ing this street that has been torn up for over twenty years. We said, Ȇ:e’re here. :e’re home and business owners, and we need that street fixed.’” 3arNs says the property ȊNept coming across” her desk when she served as executive assistant to her brother, then (ast 6t. /ouis Mayor $lvin 3arNs Jr. 6he says members of Davis’ family who owned the house visited the city offices and expressed interest in donating the property to a nonprofit. ,n 1, the family gifted the property ȃ but to 3arNs’ private real estate company 33 ,nc. 7he deal raised some eyebrows around town.
The Belleville News-Democrat published a story in 1 Tuestioning whether 3arNs’ solicitations for donations through her nonprofit, +ouse of Miles (ast 6t. /ouis, for a property that she privately owned violated the federal regulation against inurement. 3arNs told the News-Democrat she paid no salaries and sent receipts to donors and had Ȋno ethical concern” about the nonprofitprivate property arrangement. %ut the same month as the NewsDemocrat story, 3arNs transferred ownership to the nonprofit, according to 6t. &lair &ounty property tax records. 3arNs has also over the last eight years acTuired lots surrounding Davis’ home from the musician’s family through her private company, which she then transferred to the nonprofit. $ny public perception of a scandal wasn’t helped in 1 when her brother, who had moved on to East St. Louis township supervisor, got into a nasty spat with the town’s board over his attempt to hire her for $, per year as the township operations manager. Ȋ7his is $mos and $ndy n----r business,” he told the board after members reMected his plan, the News-Democrat reported.) 7he ,llinois 6tate %oard of (lections also banned $lvin 3arNs earlier this year from running for office until he paid $1,1 in fines for failures to file campaign contribution reports. +e previously served on the +ouse of Miles board, according to the News-Democrat; /eah *lover, who worNed as proMect manager for the former mayor, is now board president. ,t is unclear how much money
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. For more stories about the effect of COVID-19 on museums, please visit the Prairie State Museums Project at PrairieStateMuseumsProject.org.
the organi]ation has raised or how it has spent the money because it has declared each year that it has raised less than $5, so it has only had to fill out a 1 or Ȋpostcard” tax return that does not provide specifics rather than a more detailed tax return liNe larger nonprofits. 3earson and /auren 3arNs, who are in their 5s and friends from high school, both describe themselves as full-time volunteers for the organi]ation, but when pressed as to how they then support themselves, 3arNs says they own and manage properties. 3earson says he also bartends. &urrent Mayor 5obert (astern ,,, says he supports the $5, state grant to the +ouse of Miles because Ȋwe need to re-engage our *eneration =s to understand that this type of history is right there at their fingertips, right there in their own city.” 7he +ouse of Miles is trying to reach students living in an area where percent of residents live
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After a rocky start, a cultural center in Miles Davis’ former home is taking shape
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at or below the poverty line, according to U.S. Census data, and attending East St. Louis public schools. The district has a graduation rate of 71 percent and a chronic absenteeism rate of 66 percent, according to Illinois State Board of Education data.
“Each time a kid comes in here, we see what their desires are and we build around that. Our kids have been [left], most of them, in one parent families,” oftentimes with no father around, Pearson says while he and Parks provide a tour of the house with Davis’ music in the background and artifacts, memorabilia and art all around.
The organization’s programs include music lessons and performances, a mentorship program and activities that have little to do with music, like managing a community garden and raising a pet.
“What does that have to do with Miles Davis?” Parks asks rhetorically. “When you think about Miles, you only think about the trumpet, but Miles Davis was a very multifaceted individual, who did not allow you to put him in a box. You weren’t going to define Miles Davis; he defined himself, and so that’s what we want to empower our young people with. Don’t let people define you.”
Christian Millender, a recent East St. Louis High School graduate, plays jazz and clarinet and serves as a youth ambassador at the House of Miles. He performed the role of Miles Davis in a play that envisioned what a meeting between the trumpeter and fellow local music legend Chuck Berry would have been like.
“We had a lot of students participate from elementary through high school, so it was great to be involved and everyone had fun and learned the lines,” says Millender, eighteen, who plans to attend Jackson State University (whenever COVID-19 allows) in Mississippi, perform in the school’s marching band and study political science and meteorology. “East St. Louis, it can be tough living here, especially with all the poverty and everything that goes on here, including violence. And honestly, for me, I feel like the House of Miles is a beacon of hope for a lot of young kids in the area.”
Tisha Pomerlee, a nurse and mother of three, sends her fifteenyear-old daughter Jadora to programming at the House of Miles, because she says, “it feels like togetherness in the black community is not paramount. Not to us. Not to the government. Not to anybody. So I love the fact that Lauren goes into [East St. Louis] schools and is pulling these children in as much as she can to get them in and give them a sense of togetherness.”
The House of Miles founders plan to use the state grant to repair the organization’s vehicles for transporting students, renovate a neighboring building into a recording studio and build an outdoor stage and a solar butterfly garden in the garage, among other efforts.
“Before we got the grant, we had to tell [the state] where it’s going, and we already knew,” Pearson says. “Two years ago, we started talking to the state and we responded to these questions about X,Y and Z, and we did it to the dime.”
The founders say construction would be further along if it weren’t for the pandemic. The organization also had to suspend programming and tours and started selling face masks, with the House of Miles logo featuring a butterfly, for $15. Last month, a day after I spoke with the East St. Louis mayor for this story, news reports emerged that he and nine other city employees had tested positive for COVID-19 amid a spike in cases in the Metro East.
“It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody,” Eastern told the local Fox affiliate in late July.
Tiffany Lee, a communications professor at St. Louis Community College and coauthor of Legendary East St. Louisans: An African American Series, says that in places like East St. Louis “that suffer from poverty, any time you have a pandemic of this kind, they are harmed more. And the reason why I say that is oftentimes it is the people with the lower-paying jobs that don’t get to tele-work.”
Lee, who serves on the House of Miles board, has seen how other cultural institutions in the area have either closed or been destroyed, as was the case when a building on East Broadway — once a nightclub where Ike and Tina Turner met — burned down in 2010.
“You have a lot of areas in the city that really could help to make the city a cultural center, but what you find is those places end up being demolished due to decay,” Lee says. “What I saw [Parks and Pearson] trying to do with the House of Miles was really inspirational, because the House was very dilapidated. And the fact that they choose to build it up in the memory of Miles Davis, I think, was a great idea.” n
