Bernie Moreno, the Ohio businessman backed by Donald Trump, emerged victorious in the ugly Republican primary on Tuesday and will now face Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.
Moreno will face Brown in what is expected to be one of the most chaotic and expensive Senate races in the country. Brown was the last Democrat elected statewide in Ohio, a state Trump won twice and where Republicans see one of their best chances for a Senate majority.
Moreno, 57, defeated state Sen. Matt Dolan, a conservative politician whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians Major League Baseball team, and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who struggled to make a mark and exit third place. In the end, it was a landslide victory — Moreno beat Dolan by nearly 18 percentage points, according to unofficial vote totals.
“We now have the opportunity to retire the old communist, send him to a retirement home and save this country,” Moreno told a cheering crowd at his election party in Cleveland.
The result suggests that Trump can continue to help his preferred candidates in the primaries by lending them support and then taking them by storm to drive voters to the polls.
The election campaign was also something of a proxy war between the Trump wing and the establishment wing of the party: While Moreno had the MAGA cavalry behind him, other players in Ohio’s Republican Party, such as former Senator Rob Portman and current Governor Mike DeWine, supported Dolan.
The primaries, flooded with money by both Dolan and Moreno — both of whom are independently wealthy — grew increasingly bitter and personal in their final days. Moreno’s allies tried to portray Dolan as a liberal who would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants and raise taxes. And an Associated Press report linked Moreno’s work email address to a 2008 account on a dating website seeking “young men for fun,” causing headaches for a candidate who had campaigned as a social conservative. (Moreno said the account’s existence was a prank by an intern.)
Nearly $50 million in advertising was spent on the campaign, according to data from AdImpact. The general election will cost both sides millions more, with the Democrats’ two-seat majority in the Senate at stake.
Trump’s support has undoubtedly helped Moreno, a former luxury car dealer from Colombia who has never held elected office. The polls were locked just a few weeks ago, but the announcement of a Trump rally for Moreno last weekend appears to have given him the edge he needed to win. “He’s going to be a warrior in Washington,” Trump said Saturday at the rally outside Dayton, accusing his rival Dolan of trying to become “the next Mitt Romney.”
“This is obviously a special day for me,” Moreno said Saturday. “Imagine in your wildest dreams that a child born in Colombia, South America, could run for the U.S. Senate in Dayton, Ohio.”
Moreno briefly ran against JD Vance in the 2022 Senate primary, but withdrew when it became clear that Vance would receive Trump’s endorsement. Dolan finished third in that race.
Democrats are likely to celebrate the result. Polls showed Moreno was the weaker Republican compared to Brown – so much so that a super PAC led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent more than $3 million to help Republicans support Moreno over more moderate challengers.
Ohio’s Democratic Party has sharply criticized Moreno’s openness to a federal abortion ban; Ohio voters will decide in November whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. They have also criticized his opposition to the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans in the Senate rejected and ultimately rejected out of fear of handing President Joe Biden an electoral victory on an issue of utmost importance to many voters.
“Bernie Moreno has made it clear throughout his career and campaign that he only looks out for himself – not the people of Ohio,” said Katie Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Democratic Party. “Whether it’s through his refusal to pay his employees the overtime they deserve and intentionally destroying evidence to cover it up, his promise to push through a national abortion ban that would overturn the will of the people of Ohio, or his opposition to the bill to combat fentanyl from China and Mexico, Moreno has already shown he will not fight for the people of Ohio.”
