Cori Bush Husband: Who is Cori Bush married to?
Cori Bush is a Democratic Missouri congresswoman and activist who protested for 400 days following the death of Michael Brown Jr.
Cori Bush Husband
In February 2023, Bush married Cortney Merritts, a security specialist and U.S. Army veteran
Cori Bush Biography
Cori Bush was born in St. Louis on July 21, 1976, to Errol Bush, an alderman and former mayor of Northwoods, Missouri, and Barbara, a computer analyst. She attended Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School and Harris-Stowe State University before graduating with a nursing degree from the Lutheran School of Nursing in 2008.
Cori Bush was born and raised in St. Louis and became the first Black woman and nurse to represent Missouri and the first woman to represent her district.
The single mother of two is a Black Lives Matter activist who was involved in the Ferguson uprising in the aftermath of the 2014 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. by a white police officer. Brown has spoken openly about her experiences with homelessness, sexual assault, and other forms of violence throughout her life.
Cori Bush worked for a childcare company in 2001 when she was in her mid-20s, but she left after becoming pregnant with her first son, Zion. Zion spent the first four months of his life in a hospital after being born at five months and weighing just over one pound. Bush was pregnant with her second son, Angel, by the time she was able to bring him home.
Cori Bush eventually returned to her childcare job, but because she couldn’t pay the rent, she, her then-husband, and their two small children spent four months sleeping in their car, staying with friends, or in a hotel. According to The Washington Post, she would stay late at work to wash her hair in the bathroom sink after everyone had left, until one day, her boss found the family a place to live and furnished the home.
Cori became a single mother after her marriage ended, and in 2005, when her young children were older, she enrolled in nursing school. She began working as a registered nurse at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital after graduating in 2008. Cori founded her church, the Kingdom Embassy International Church in St. Louis, in 2011, which closed three years later. Bush returned to nursing in 2013, taking on the role of nursing supervisor at St. Louis-based Hopewell Health Centers, Inc
Cori Bush is a divorced mother of two children, son Zion and daughter, Angel.
Urged to run for political office by fellow activists, Cori Bush reluctantly entered the 2016 Senate race, hoping to unseat incumbent Republican Roy Blunt, but came in a distant second in the Democratic primary. Two years later, she ran against incumbent Lacy Clay but lost again, receiving only 13% of the primary vote. Clay had been the district’s representative since 2001, succeeding his father, Bill, who was first elected in 1968.
Running for Congress again in 2020, Bush defeated Clay in the primary this time and was sworn in at the United States Capitol on January 3, 2021, after winning her district by 60 percentage points. (Knock Down the House, a 2019 documentary, also featured her primary campaign.) Bush wore a mask with Breonna Taylor’s name written on it on the first day of her two-week freshman Congress orientation, later recounting how some of her fellow members of Congress thought that was her name.
Following her election, Cori Bush was appointed to the House Judiciary Committee and the Congressional Progressive Caucus as deputy whip. She introduced a resolution on January 6, 2021, hours after rioters stormed the United States Capitol, to remove every congressional Republican who supported overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 United States presidential election. Bush also demanded that Donald Trump be removed from office.
Cori Bush’s net worth is estimated to be between $1 million and $5 million as of August 2023.
Cori Bush has a brother, Perry and a sister, Kelli.
Her father, Errol Bush, is an alderman and a former mayor of Northwoods in St. Louis. Her mother is Barbara Blakney.
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