Iran Is the Closing Message in a Contested Democratic Primary

A progressive challenger’s final message in a heated Democratic primary is all about Iran.

“I hope to earn your vote to be your proudly uncompromised pro-peace leader in Washington,” Nida Allam, a county commissioner running in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, said in an ad after strongly condemning the Trump administration’s military operation in Iran.

Allam uses the spot to address two of the issues that have roiled her race against Democratic incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee: AI and Middle East politics.

Tuesday’s primary — pitting a young Muslim populist against a progressive two-term incumbent — is a signal of the Democratic Party’s direction in North Carolina’s 4th District. Past redistricting efforts made the district more blue, and an influx of immigrants in recent years made it more diverse, too.

The ad will run on digital platforms and on air, including three times during a Duke University and North Carolina State University basketball game Monday night, per Allam’s campaign.

Allam has been hitting Foushee hard in the final week of the campaign over her contributions from the AI industry. An Anthropic-backed PAC boosted Foushee’s campaign coffers just last week with more than $1.6 million. The military used AI tools created by Anthropic in its weekend strikes on Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“As Election Day approaches, you’ll see nearly $2 million of ads for my opponent, funded by AI-backed super PACs, the same AI corporation who powered Trump’s attacks on Iran,” Allam said in the ad.

Foushee opposed the Iran strikes, and in a post on X urged Congress to pass a war powers resolution. “Trump’s attack on Iran is an unconstitutional escalation that risks dragging the United States into another catastrophic and endless war in the Middle East,” she wrote.

Foushee said her contributions do not influence her work in Congress. “I do not coordinate with super PACs in any way,” she told NOTUS. She also pointed to her statement last week urging Anthropic to not weaken its safety guardrails because of pressure from the Pentagon, which it ultimately did not.

“As the only candidate in this race who has the support of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a cosponsor of Rep. Massie’s War Powers Resolution, I am confident that voters resonate with my work in Congress rather than my opponent’s last-minute misinformation about outside spending,” Foushee said in a statement.

Foushee’s campaign also pointed out that Leaders We Deserve, a PAC fueling Allam’s campaign, is funded by donors who also give to pro-Israel and AI-friendly PACs.

Allam, who has campaigned on an anti-corporate message, said in the ad that she would “never take a dime from defense contractors or the pro-Israel lobby.”

The two candidates have wrestled over Middle East politics before. In their 2022 matchup, critics within the Democratic Party berated Foushee for accepting money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. She’s since sworn off funds from AIPAC.

Foushee has shifted on Israel policy in other ways. She did not seek an endorsement from the Democratic Majority for Israel this year, despite earning one in 2024. “Instead, I cosponsored the Block the Bombs Act, protested Netanyahu’s Joint Address, and voted against the State Department funding package that included $3.3B for Israel,” Foushee told NOTUS.