The Senate defeated the latest bipartisan effort Thursday to end the war in Iran with a war powers resolution, despite a growing number of Republicans in competitive elections breaking with President Donald Trump with calls to end the nearly seven-month-long conflict.
Most of those vulnerable incumbents stuck by the president to oppose what marked the 14th war powers vote in the upper chamber, allowing the GOP-controlled Senate to narrowly oppose a measure that Democrats have routinely forced votes on since the war began in February.
The vote failed, 49-50, with several members crossing party lines in a similar fashion to previous resolutions. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voted against the resolution with most Republicans, while Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) sided in favor with most Democrats.
Collins is one of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents. Tillis is retiring, while Murkowski and Paul are not up for reelection.
But others with competitive midterm contests, including Sens. Roger Marshall (R-KS), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Jon Husted (R-OH), opposed the resolution.
Husted, who is facing former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a toss-up race, has called for the conflict to “come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices.”
Sullivan, like a growing number of GOP colleagues, is worried high gas prices from the war will hurt them at the polls, wants Trump to invoke a diesel export ban. Sullivan is facing former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola in another toss-up election and recently called the cost of diesel “just too damn high.”
Marshall, who is being challenged by Democrat Adam Hamilton, told Semafor he would “love to see a good way to end this war” but expressed outstanding concerns about Iran possessing nuclear weapons.
“It’s madness,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a floor speech. “Americans are getting crushed at the gas pumps. Working families are getting cleaned out at the grocery store counters. Family farms are going under, because Trump took this country to war without authorization, without a plan, without a second thought to the consequences.”