President Obama’s nuclear arms agreement with Iran has opened a rift within the Democratic Party. But in a potentially important development for next year’s election, the party’s major Senate candidates are showing no such division: Nearly all of them support the deal.
The Senate Democrats’ unified front is fraught territory for the party, with polls showing the public strongly opposed to the agreement. Republicans, whose own senators are in lockstep opposition to the deal, are crowing that it gives them a potent issue to use against the Democrats with both donors and voters.
But that hasn’t stopped Democratic candidates in every marquee Senate battleground from falling behind Obama -- even if some took their time getting there.
On Wednesday, Rep. Alan Grayson announced he supported the arms agreement, the second Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida to do so. In August, his foe in the Democratic primary, Rep. Patrick Murphy, said he would also support the Iranian deal.
In Ohio, former Gov. Ted Strickland and upstart Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld each back the agreement, while both candidates in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, former Rep. Joe Sestak and onetime gubernatorial Chief of Staff Katie McGinty, have thrown their support behind it.