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 The New Jersey Democrat, a former labor union leader, met with
Obama and other Democrats twice in the White House. He listened to
briefings by Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz and senior Defense Department officials.
He took an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, where Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu spent two hours with him and 21 other Democratic
lawmakers, picking out faults in the agreement that Israel opposes.
Voters from Norcross's south New Jersey district flooded his office
with phone calls and emails and buttonholed him in person.
On Tuesday, Norcross said he would oppose the deal on the grounds
that it does not go far enough to prevent Iran from developing a
nuclear weapon. All the attempts at persuasion gave him the
information he needed to make up his mind, he said, adding that the
politics of the debate weren't a factor.
"People really know at a gut level that if anybody tries to bring
politics into it, (that's) way off base," he said in an interview
with Reuters.
As the minority party, Norcross and his fellow Democrats are often
sidelined on Capitol Hill. But over the past month they have been
the targets of a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign as they
weigh one of the most consequential foreign-policy decisions in
years.
The intense pressure appears to have made the outcome of next
month's votes on the deal closer than expected as some Democrats are
persuaded to break ranks with Obama.
Congress, where majority Republicans overwhelmingly oppose the deal,
is expected to reject the pact next month. But Obama will still be
able to save the agreement if he can deny opponents in either house
the two-thirds majority needed to override his expected veto.
The fate of the deal now hinges on the votes of the 18 Democratic
senators and roughly 100 Democratic House members who have yet to
say how they will vote.
The U.S.-led international agreement reached in July would put new
limits on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting crippling
economic sanctions on the country.
On one side of the lobbying effort are progressive groups who back
Obama's view that the deal is the best chance to avoid another
Middle East war. On the other side, with a larger war chest, are
many Jewish-American groups that say the deal has dangerous
loopholes and fear it will empower Iran and ultimately leave Israel
vulnerable to nuclear attack.
Norcross came out against the deal at a synagogue in his district,
where he was joined on stage by an Israeli official and a lobbyist
for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful
pro-Israel group that opposes the pact.
Many members of that congregation who normally support Obama oppose
him on this issue, according to its leader.
"This is a chasm that can't be bridged," said Rabbi Ephraim Epstein
of Congregation Sons of Israel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
 REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION
White House officials privately expect they will be able to round up
the 146 votes needed in the House to keep the deal alive, and are
cautiously confident about the Senate as well.
In the Senate, 26 of the chamber's 44 Democrats have said they
support the deal and two have said they will oppose it, according to
a Reuters tally.
That means opponents of the deal need to win over at least 11 of the
18 senators who remain undecided.
"I would say we have a fighting chance," said former Democratic
Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is making calls while recovering from
knee surgery on behalf of Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, an
interest group that opposes the deal.
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"It's not out of reach, but we're not kidding ourselves," Lieberman
told Reuters.
Democrats still on the fence face intense public pressure.
Lieberman's group, which is funded by AIPAC, plans to spend up to
$40 million in its campaign to kill the deal. The group has run TV
ads in at least 23 states, according to public filings compiled by
the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group.
It has taken out billboards in New York's Times Square praising
Charles Schumer - the Senate's No. 3 Democrat - for opposing the
deal and chastising Senator Kirsten Gillibrand for backing it.
Another AIPAC affiliate paid for Norcross's trip to Israel earlier
this month, which was planned before the deal was complete. Most of
the other 21 Democratic House members on the trip have yet to
announce their position on the deal.
Secure America Now, another advocacy group that opposes the deal,
has bought ads on the messaging service Snapchat to sway Maryland
Senator Ben Cardin. The group's supporters have generated 2,400
calls to his office and 3,500 calls to his top staffer, according to
spokesman Vincent Harris.
The group has also used Twitter to target undecided members like New
Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
"I have never had my cell phone blow up and my email account blow up
as much as it is now," Booker said on a conference call with
Jewish-American groups on Thursday.
J Street, a liberal Jewish-American group that backs the deal, is
running TV ads in nine states and has enlisted former Israeli
security officials to speak to undecided Democrats.
CREDO Action, another liberal group that backs the deal, says its
members have placed 49,000 phone calls and organized dozens of
meetings with lawmakers and staff.
Norcross's decision to oppose the deal has given new ammunition to
Alex Law, a progressive Democrat who is mounting a long-shot bid to
unseat him in the 2016 primary election.
"He should be supporting our president," Law told Reuters.
Norcross said even a personal appeal from the president probably
wouldn't have changed his mind.
"What bit of information that I don't have already could he have
brought to light?" he told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and Jeffrey
Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Stuart
Grudgings)
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