The Iran War’s Impact on Oil Is Hitting Key Senate Races Hard

In a sign that the race is uncomfortably close, the White House released a tranche of heating oil reserves in a bid to temporarily draw down the price of the fuel.

“Families are spending a lot more to fill up a tank than they did a year ago,” says Mark Wolfe, the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which predicted that households in the Northeast could spend an additional $3.8 billion on heating oil this winter.

Unlike price spikes on diesel fuel, which may filter to consumers through higher prices on a number of different products, heating oil itself is a consumer good: Families pay directly for the oil to be delivered to their homes. The impact to voters’ pocketbooks, Wolfe says, is “very immediate.”

Fertilizer Prices Shake the Midwest

High diesel prices have hurt farmers, but so, too, has the cost of fertilizer.

Nitrogen-based fertilizers, like ammonia and urea, are made from natural gas by-products, and some of the world’s biggest producers are based in the Middle East. While some production has restarted, it remains well below its prewar average. Urea prices spiked earlier this year.

“If you’re going to plant crops like wheat and corn, you have to apply nitrogen,” says Josh Linville, the vice president of fertilizer at financial services company StoneX.

Sulfur, which is also made from oil and gas by-products, is a crucial ingredient in other types of fertilizer. Sulfur prices have more than doubled since the start of this year, thanks to supply chain issues in the Gulf. Farmers who use sulfur-based fertilizers, Linville says, have had to make tough choices about how to manage their crops.

These stresses have put fertilizer front and center in tight races in states like Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois. VoteVets, a PAC that supports Democrats, aired an attack ad against Republican Senate nominee Ashley Hinson in Iowa earlier this month that highlights her record of voting in favor of attacks on Iran.

“Record gas prices. Record fertilizer costs. Farms going under,” the ad intones. “And Ashley Henson’s voting for all of it in Washington.”

In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown’s campaign has aired an ad in recent weeks pinning high diesel and fertilizer costs on his opponent, incumbent senator John Husted, again by bringing up his track record of voting for the war.

Whether that can peel off enough farm voters—a core Republican constituency—to swing the race to Brown remains to be seen. But the costs on farmers are mounting, and there’s little relief in sight with uncertainty looming over Iran. “That farmer’s sitting there saying, ‘I have to farm, but it’s not a matter of can I make money,’” Linville says. “It’s ‘how do I lose the least amount of money next year?’”