Bobby Lee Rush (born November 23, 1946) is an American politician, activist, and pastor who served as the U.S. representative for Illinois's 1st congressional district from 1993 to 2023. A civil rights activist during the 1960s, Rush co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.
Rush was first elected to Congress in 1992 and won consecutive reelections until his retirement. A member of the Democratic Party, Rush is the only politician to have defeated Barack Obama in an election, which he did in the 2000 Democratic primary for Illinois's 1st congressional district.
Rush's district was originally principally on the South Side of Chicago, with a population from 2003 to early 2013 that was 65% African-American, a higher proportion than any other congressional district. In 2011 the Illinois General Assembly redistricted this area after the 2010 census. Although still minority-majority, since early 2013 it is 51.3% African American, 36.1% White, 9.8% Hispanic, and 2% Asian. On January 3, 2022, Rush announced that he was retiring from Congress.
Early life, education, and activism
Rush was born on November 23, 1946, in Albany, Georgia. After his parents separated when Rush was 7 years old, his mother took him and his siblings to Chicago, Illinois, joining the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South in the first part of the 20th century. In 1963, Rush dropped out of high school before graduating and joined the U.S. Army. While stationed in Chicago in 1966, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had helped obtain national civil rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1965. In 1968, he went AWOL from the Army and co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers. He later finished his Army service, receiving an honorable discharge.
Throughout the 1960s, Rush was involved in the civil rights movement and worked in civil disobedience campaigns in the southern United States. After co-founding the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, he served as its defense minister. After the Chicago Police Department and the State's Attorney Office assassinated Black Panther Fred Hampton in a police raid, Rush said, "We needed to arm ourselves", and called the police "pigs". Earlier that year, Rush had discussed the philosophy of his membership in the Black Panthers, saying, "Black people have been on the defensive for all these years. The trend now is not to wait to be attacked. We advocate offensive violence against the power structure." After Hampton's death, Rush became acting chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party. He worked on several nonviolent projects that built support for the Black Panthers in African-American communities, such as coordinating a medical clinic which offered sickle-cell anemia testing on an unprecedented scale. Rush was imprisoned for six months in 1972 on a weapons charge after carrying a pistol into a police station. In 1974, he left the Black Panthers, who were already in decline. "We started glorifying thuggery and drugs", he told People. A deeply religious born-again Christian, Rush said, "I don't repudiate any of my involvement in the Panther party—it was part of my maturing."
Rush earned his Bachelor of General Studies with honors from Roosevelt University in 1973, and a Master's degree in political science from University of Illinois at Chicago in 1974. He completed a degree in theological studies at McCormick Theological Seminary in 1998. On May 13, 2017, Rush received a Doctorate of Humanities, honoris causa, from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) for his outstanding contributions to Chicago.
In 1975, Rush ran for a seat on the Chicago City Council, the first of several black activist to seek political office, and lost to incumbent alderman William Barnett, receiving 23% of the vote to Barnett's 55% and Larry S. Bullock's 21%. He ran again in 1983 and won, alongside Harold Washington's victory as Chicago's first black mayor. Rush supported Washington's coalition during the Council Wars that followed the 1983 election. Rush's allies in the black-power movement abandoned the Democrats in the wake of the political turmoil that followed the sudden death of Washington in 1987, and formed their own political party, naming it after Washington. Rush infuriated Harold Washington Party leaders by spurning their candidates for local offices and sometimes backing white Democrats instead. He worked with the Democrats and was rewarded with the deputy chairmanship of the state party.
After redistricting in 1992, Rush ran in Illinois's newly redrawn 1st congressional district, which included much of Chicago's South Side. The district had a high proportion of African-American residents; it has been represented by Black congressmen since 1929. Rush defeated incumbent U.S. Representative Charles Hayes and six other candidates in the Democratic primary election. He won the general election with 83% of the vote. (The 1st is so heavily Democratic that Rush had all but assured himself of a seat in Congress with his primary win.) The district has been in Democratic hands since 1935.
In the 2000 Democratic primary for the district, Rush was challenged by Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. During the primary, Rush said, "Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool. Barack is a person who read about the civil rights protests and thinks he knows all about it."
Rush claimed Obama was insufficiently rooted in Chicago's black neighborhoods to represent constituents' concerns. Obama said Rush was a part of "a politics that is rooted in the past" and said he could build bridges with whites to get things done. But while Obama did well in his own Hyde Park base, he did not get enough support from the surrounding black neighborhoods. Starting with 10% name recognition, Obama eventually gained 30% of the vote, losing by more than 2 to 1 despite winning among white voters. Rush won 61% of the vote, and won the general election with 88% of the vote.
In 1999, Rush ran for mayor of Chicago, but lost to incumbent Richard M. Daley, an ethnic Irish American whose father had long controlled the city as mayor. He remained active in city and regional politics.
In 2013, Rush criticized U.S. Senator Mark Kirk's proposal that 18,000 members of the Chicago gang "Gangster Disciples" be arrested, calling Kirk's suggestion "headline grabbing" and an "upper-middle-class, elitist white boy solution to a problem he knows nothing about". A spokesman for Kirk said Kirk had dealt with the issues for decades.
Also in 2013, Alex Clifford was forced to resign as CEO of Metra commuter rail agency, but soon after he left, a memo was released indirectly accusing Rush of using his political power to steer a $50,000 contract to a Washington-based business group.
In the 2015 Chicago mayoral election, Rush endorsed Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Emanuel's runoff reelection campaign against Jesus "Chuy" Garcia.
In the 2019 Chicago mayoral election, Rush endorsed Bill Daley in the first round and Toni Preckwinkle in the runoff.
Though a very close friend of former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, Rush announced early on in the 2008 Democratic primaries that he would support Obama. After Obama won the presidency and vacated his Senate seat, Rush said that an African American should be appointed to the seat: "With the resignation of President-elect Obama, we now have no African-Americans in the United States Senate, and we believe it will be a national disgrace to not have this seat filled by one of the many capable African-American Illinois politicians." Rush said he did not support any particular person and was not interested in the seat. On December 30, 2008, Governor Rod Blagojevich announced his appointment of Roland Burris, the former Attorney General of Illinois; Rush was present at the press conference and spoke in support of Burris.
Rush endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. After she dropped out, he endorsed Michael Bloomberg and became his campaign's national co-chair.