NRSC hits Bennet on Iran vote

Republicans are piling onto Sen. Michael Bennet for his support of the Iran nuclear agreement in the hopes of hurting the Colorado Democrat’s reelection chances. 

{mosads}The National Republican Senatorial Campaign will release a video Tuesday, shared first with The Hill, hitting Bennet for backing the deal in the Senate.

“Senator Bennet supports the Iran nuclear deal. Billions to Iranian terrorists, lifting ballistic missile arms controls, Iran inspecting its own nuclear sites, a path to the bomb,” the narrator in the video says. 

The narrator adds that the international agreement to trade sanctions relief for concessions of Iran’s nuclear program is “so bad, many Democrats were ready to vote against it,” but blames Bennet for helping to block a Senate vote of disapproval.

Four Democrats, including incoming Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.), spoke out against the bill and joined with Republicans to vote to bring a bill disapproving of the deal to a vote. But that coalition did not reach the required 60 vote threshold to command a full Senate vote, and the new ad blames Bennet for that outcome. 

The nuclear deal is seen as one of the largest pieces of President Obama’s foreign policy legacy, and supporters of the deal argue that it gives international inspectors unprecedented access to monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, which will ensure the country doesn’t surreptitiously work toward a bomb.

Opponents argue that the sanctions relief will allow the country to continue to fund its support of terrorism and that monitors won’t have complete and unfettered access to any potential hidden sites. 

Bennet, the former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, holds one of the only Democratic seats that Republicans believe the party can retake control of during the 2016 election. Democrats have to win just five seats to take absolute control of the body, and there are significantly more red-state seats in play than blue-state ones. 

No top-tier challenger has emerged to take on Bennet, who has posted strong fundraising numbers but had mixed, partisan support in a July Quinnipiac poll.

The NRSC’s ad comes as the conservative group Advancing Colorado, which is linked to the billionaire Koch brothers, announced it would air another television ad critical of Bennet’s Iran stance. That video mimics the infamous 1984 “Daisy” ad that counts down to a nuclear explosion; both ads end with a mushroom cloud, suggesting that Bennet’s decision could lead to a nuclear detonation.  

“With Washington Republicans lacking an opponent in the Colorado Senate race, it comes as no surprise that a secretly funded group with ties to the billionaire Koch brothers is out with a deeply offensive, fear mongering attack against Sen. Bennet,” Colorado Democratic Party spokesman Andrew Zucker said in a statement about the Advancing Colorado ad. 

“The truth is Michael Bennet passed tough sanctions against Iran, has worked to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon and is authoring legislation to make the Iran deal even stronger. He has consistently fought to make us safer and more secure and this group’s smear attack has no place in Colorado politics.”