Bennet probably escapes fallout

Senator’s support for agreement initially drew criticism.

Once seen as radioactive to his re-election chances, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s decision last year to support a nuclear deal with Iran appears less damaging now — still a political pressure point, but probably not fatal to the Colorado Democrat.

A key reason is that GOP rival Darryl Glenn has neither the resources nor the momentum to press Bennet on it even as Republican leaders have tried to reignite outrage in the wake of revelations that the U.S. leveraged a planned $400 million payment to Tehran to ensure the release of American prisoners held by Iran.

“It’s not as explosive as it was last year, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be,” said Jonathan Lockwood, executive director of Advancing Colorado, the Denverbased group that aired a television ad against Bennet in 2015 that featured footage of the detonation of an atomic bomb.

“It’s kind of like people are used to hearing terrible news since the Iran deal went into effect, so it’s not new,” he said.

Another potential factor — and one emphasized by Bennet and President Barack Obama — is that the pact has succeeded in slowing Iran’s nuclear capabilities, even as Tehran has remained adversarial by conducting missile tests and arresting dual-national citizens.

“The deal is moving forward and is being implemented,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the Rand Corporation. But it’s not leading to “momentum for a larger thaw.”

In an interview this week, Bennet praised the agreement: “I think the deal is going well — so far.”

Then there’s the question of how much the Iran deal resonates with Colorado voters.

A Quinnipiac University poll from April 2015, conducted just before the accord was struck, found that 67 percent of Colorado voters supported a deal in which the U.S. and other countries would lift some sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear program — which is ultimately what happened.

The same poll, however, also revealed that twothirds of Colorado voters wanted Congress to agree to any Iran deal. Last September, Bennet and other Senate Democrats blocked Republicans from moving forward with a bill rejecting the pact. That gave the White House the ability to seal the deal without congressional approval.

Since then, public opinion surveys in Colorado on the issue are hard to find, but a national poll released Monday shows “a huge shift of public opinion” in favor of the pact, 49 percent to 36 percent, according to politi- cal tracking firm Morning Consult. A year ago, Morning Consult found that 56 percent of voters opposed it.

Unlike in Colorado, the Iran deal is front and center in U.S. Senate races across the nation. This month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee bought TV ads attacking the Democratic candidate in Nevada for her support of the deal. Meanwhile, the incumbent Republican candidate in Pennsylvania launched a 26-county bus tour in which he repeatedly criticized his challenger on the same issue. The NRSC released web videos last week attacking Democratic candidates in 10 states for supporting the deal — but not against Bennet, despite hitting him on the issue in March. An average of recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics had Bennet up 13 percentage points on Glenn.

In the early months of Colorado’s Senate race, there were signs the Iran deal could emerge as its signature issue. Three GOP candidates cited the Iran accord as the dominant reason they entered the race to challenge Bennet and frequently raised the issue during the Republican primary.

Democratic and Republican operatives also hinted last year that Bennet’s vote could invite millions of dollars in outside spending against him from pro-Israel donors — given their adamant opposition to the deal.

But an avalanche of outside spending on Glenn’s behalf has not materialized — another casualty of what one Republican called a missed opportunity for his party.

“Sen. Bennet should be held accountable by an aggressive campaign that points out that A) he voted for (the Iran deal) and B) he hasn’t said a thing about the continued (Iran) threat,” said Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado GOP chairman who ran Jack Graham’s losing Senate bid.

“The only way you do that is by having an aggressive campaign,” Wadhams said. “But so far Sen. Bennet has gotten a free ride.”

Glenn, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, often makes note of the Iran deal on the campaign trail, as he did at a Republican gathering this month in Denver.

“What we are finding out is (the Iran deal) is making things worse and Michael Bennet was a deciding vote,” Glenn said. “He should be held accountable for that.”

But he didn’t emphasize the issue Tuesday in a speech at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood. Instead, he put a different problem at the top of his list rather than national security.

“You can talk about ISIS, you can talk about all the threats that are around the world, but in my opinion, the greatest threat that we are facing is the destruction of the American family,” he said.

After the event, Glenn refused to talk about his opposition to the Iran deal.

Bennet defends his 2015 votes to support the compact — pointing to the reduction of enriched uranium, decrease of spinning centrifuges, the disabled plutonium reactor and unprecedented level of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The bottom line is: One year ago, they were still two to three months away from a bomb, and today they are more than a year away from a bomb,” he said.

Still, the State Department’s delay in making a $400 million payment to Iran until three American prisoners were released — part of a larger $1.7 billion settlement on a disputed weapons deal — is being labeled as a ransom payment by critics.

Bennet said he is reserving judgment on the issue until he receives a briefing from the administration and declined to address whether he considered it a ransom payment.

“The timing obviously raises concerns, but I want to hear directly from the administration before I (comment),” he said.

Bennet did acknowledge, as Secretary of State John Kerry has done, that some of the sanctions relief would go to Iranian organizations considered terrorists.

But he argued that it would have happened regardless of the deal, as other nations lifted their economic penalties. And he touted a bill he introduced to track the flow of money after the repeal of sanctions.