CLEVELAND — After he won Ohio’s divisive Republican Senate primary Tuesday night, former car dealer Bernie Moreno quickly took aim at the Democrat he’s running to unseat in November.
“We have an opportunity now,” Moreno told his supporters, “to retire the old commie.”
The following afternoon, Sen. Sherrod Brown hosted a video conference call to discuss new funding he helped secure to build an Intel computer chip plant in the state.
Brown, the three-term incumbent whom Moreno is attempting to brand as a far-left apparatchik, was joined by Intel’s vice president of government affairs and a former Republican congressman who now runs the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, both of whom praised him for his bipartisan efforts. A labor leader whose union endorsed Brown this week was also on the call.
“Republicans and Democrats locked arms to bring this brand-new industry to Ohio, and it’s a big, big deal,” said the chamber’s CEO, former Rep. Steve Stivers. “I want to thank Sen. Brown … and the Republican members and Democratic members of the U.S. House that supported the CHIPS Act, as well.”
With the primary over and the race shifting to general election mode, the rush is on between Brown and Moreno to define themselves and the other in a battle that could determine which party controls the Senate. Each candidate accuses the other of selling out Ohio workers and being out of step with mainstream voters.
Brown, who has made appeals to working-class voters central to his past campaigns, maintains a progressive populism. Moreno, a relative newcomer to politics who has dabbled in Cleveland’s civic elite, boasts of being an outsider and embraces the right-wing populism advanced by former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed him.
As Brown’s business-friendly call Wednesday illustrated, he is eager to show off his relationships with executives. Meanwhile, Brown’s campaign and his allies have been characterizing Moreno as an unprincipled businessman who mistreats employees, citing past lawsuits over workplace discrimination and overtime pay against his companies.
“My record,” Brown said Wednesday in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “is to reach across the aisle and get things done. … My opponent has always looked out for himself.”
That sentiment is already being echoed in nearly exact language by Brown’s allies, including the Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC that through an offshoot meddled in the GOP primary by airing an ad that promoted Moreno’s conservative ideas and endorsement from Trump. The multimillion-dollar push in the race’s final week suggested that national Democrats saw Moreno as Brown’s weakest possible opponent.
“Bernie Moreno cannot be trusted to put the interests of Ohioans over his own,” Senate Majority PAC President JB Poersch said Tuesday night in an email from the group that labeled Moreno as a “shady car salesman” and referred to the lawsuits his companies have faced.
A statement from the Ohio Democratic Party noted Moreno’s support for a federal abortion ban, even though Ohio voters have enshrined women’s reproductive rights in the state constitution, in the same vein. “Bernie Moreno has made clear throughout his career and his campaign that he only looks out for himself — not the people of Ohio,” spokesperson Katie Smith said.
Asked for comment for this article, Brown campaign spokesperson Reeves Oyster did not deviate from the message.
“Sherrod will win this race because his record fighting for Ohio stands in stark contrast to Bernie Moreno, who has shown he is only out for himself,” she said.
Moreno’s push to turn voters against Brown — the only Democrat who has consistently won elections in Ohio in recent years — includes framing him as an extreme liberal and political phony who feels less at home on Lake Erie than he does in Martha’s Vineyard.
“While I’ve spent my career building businesses and creating jobs in Ohio, Sherrod Brown has spent his career collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck and rubber-stamping the left-wing agenda of D.C. Democrats,” Moreno said in a statement Wednesday to NBC News. “Sherrod Brown votes with Biden 99% of the time and sells out Ohio workers in favor of Biden’s open-border policies and Green New Deal radicalism.”
Moreno's supporters followed a similar theme in their post-primary attacks on Brown.
“Bernie is a political outsider running against a liberal career politician who has been running for office for 50 years,” Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in the group’s statement endorsing Moreno and criticizing Brown.
Club for Growth PAC President David McIntosh issued a statement highlighting the millions of dollars his group spent on TV ads boosting Moreno in the primary while noting that he was “eager to help him defeat radical leftist, Sherrod Brown, in the general election this fall.”
Moreno won the three-candidate GOP primary in a landslide after having leaned heavily on Trump, who headlined a rally for him last weekend, and Trump-friendly figures like Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. State Sen. Matt Dolan, Moreno’s chief rival, received endorsements from Gov. Mike DeWine, whom Brown unseated as a senator in 2006, and Vance’s predecessor, former Sen. Rob Portman.
The primary turned particularly nasty in its final weeks, with Moreno casting Dolan and his supporters as RINOs, or Republicans in name only, and acknowledging a “slightly dysfunctional Republican family” dynamic. Dolan and state Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the other GOP candidate in the race, emphasized Moreno’s reversals on several policy positions, rehashed the stories about the lawsuits he had faced and described him as untrustworthy.
Shortly after the race was called for Moreno on Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a minutelong digital ad that repackaged some of his opponents’ attacks.
“Republicans don’t trust Bernie Moreno,” a narrator says. “Why should you?”
Brown said in his “Morning Joe” interview that he believes he can win over Dolan voters.
“Dolan ran a campaign like DeWine, like Portman would run,” Brown said, before he mentioned recent discussions with DeWine about tornado damage in the state and praised Portman for his bipartisanship. “That’s the kind of public official he has been and the kind of public official I am.”
Brown kept the pragmatic talk going a few hours later on the Intel call. When a local reporter asked whether it was true that Moreno was the rival he was most eager to face, Brown demurred.
“I’m just not going to take calls like that today,” Brown said. “I’m always open, but this is a nonpolitical call, and people of both parties are on this call. I just think I shouldn’t answer it today here. But thanks for trying. I always appreciate reporters’ being aggressive and trying.”
Moreno’s team pointed Wednesday to signs of a unifying party, emphasizing how DeWine quickly backed Moreno after his primary victory. Moreno, who won all of the state’s 88 counties, also ran up sizable margins in eastern Ohio and the Mahoning Valley, home to Youngstown and a large concentration of blue-collar voters key to Brown’s winning coalitions in the past.
“While Bernie is going to be able to run on a ticket hand in hand with President Trump, Sherrod Brown is going to have to spend the next eight months running away from Joe Biden, despite his record of voting with him 99% of the time,” said Andy Surabian, a senior adviser to Moreno. “Furthermore, Bernie’s populist message directly appeals to the very working-class voters that Sherrod needs to massively overperform with to even have a prayer at winning in November.”
