I’ve been highlighting how mainstream press has been doing it’s actual job in pointing out that U.S. Senate candidate, Bernie Moreno (R. OH), has been constantly lying about his background. Glad to see the AP today has been jumping on board with this:
Bernie Moreno was ready with a quip when a radio host in his native Colombia asked why he would want to trade his successful professional and personal life in Ohio for the toils of the U.S. Senate.
“Remember that my brother, Luis Alberto, just got out of politics — and there always needs to be a Moreno in politics,” he replied in Spanish during the 2021 interview. “Otherwise, what happens in the world, right?”
The lighthearted response from Moreno, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, hints at his family’s deep political connections in both the United States and Colombia. Those ties, combined with his family’s considerable wealth in their home country, are the backdrop to Moreno’s journey from owning a single Cleveland car dealership to becoming Donald Trump’s pick in the pivotal state.
Moreno has pitched himself as a political outsider and immigrant whose family built its way out of rudimentary beginnings in the U.S. thanks to the American dream. In a statement, he pushed back against questions about his portrayal of his origin story and his parents’ sacrifices as “disgraceful.” He also criticized his Democratic rival, third-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, as someone who “grew up with a silver spoon,” a reference to the incumbent’s status as the Yale-educated son and grandson of doctors.
“He comes from one of Colombia’s well-off families, whose wealth goes back generations and whose members recycle through senior government jobs,” said Philip Chicola, a retired U.S. diplomat who once worked closely with Moreno’s older brother.
While the AP isn’t alone in pointing out that Moreno has been lying about his background, it’s still good that this is continuing to gain attention. For example, The New York Times had a good piece out in May calling out Moreno’s “rags to riches” bull shit story:
Running under the banner of Donald J. Trump’s populist political movement, Bernie Moreno, the Republican challenging Senator Sherrod Brown, humbly calls himself a “car guy from Cleveland” and recounts the modest circumstances of his childhood, when his immigrant family started over from scratch in the United States.
“We came here with absolutely nothing — we came here legally — but we came here, nine of us in a two-bedroom apartment,” Mr. Moreno said in 2023, in what became his signature pitch. His father “had to leave everything behind,” he has said, remembering what he called his family’s “lower-middle-class status.”
But there is much more that Mr. Moreno does not say about his background, his upbringing and his very powerful present-day ties in the country where he was born.
Mr. Moreno was born into a rich and politically connected family in Bogotá, a city that it never completely left behind, where some members continue to enjoy great wealth and status.
While his parents left Colombia in 1971 to start over in the United States, where Mr. Moreno fully transplanted, some of his siblings eventually returned. One of his brothers served as Bogotá’s ambassador to the United States. Another founded a development and construction empire that stretches across the Andes from the Colombian interior to its Caribbean shores.
And The Guardian had this piece out calling him out about lying about his background:
In 2021, as Moreno moved into national politics with a first run for a Senate nomination, the Cleveland Plain Dealer said he “says he came to the United States as a child with his mother and siblings to flee socialism in their native Colombia. He believes that same ideology is rising in the United States, and he wants to fight back.”
But when Moreno was born, on 14 February 1967, Colombia was nine years into the 16-year period of National Front government, in which conservative and liberal parties alternated being in power as a way to avoid violence between the two factions.
Furthermore, the first leftwing Colombian government in modern times is the current one, headed by Gustavo Petro and in power since 2022.
Colombia has long been home to leftwing guerrilla groups. As described by the US Congressional Research Service, when Moreno lived there, the country was home to “leftist, Marxist-inspired insurgencies … including the Farc, launched in 1964, and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), which formed the following year”.
Such groups, the CRS says, “conducted kidnappings, committed serious human rights violations, and carried out a campaign of terror that aimed to unseat the central government in Bogotá”.
Moreno, however, has described an early childhood far removed from such worries.
By his own description, his father was secretary of health under Misael Pastrana, a conservative and the last National Front president between 1970 and 1974.
And Heartland Signal also poked holes in Moreno’s background story he’s been pitching:
Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno says he learned English from watching Ronald Reagan’s speeches as a child, even though Reagan was not yet a national political figure and Moreno was five years old at the time.
During an appearance on the “MVRed Podcast” in January 2022, Moreno claimed to have learned English from listening to Reagan’s speeches. When asked about who helped shape his political beliefs, Moreno cited conversations with his father, and speeches by Reagan which he claims to have learned English from.
“I’d say my dad first. Reagan certainly, you know I learned English listening to Reagan’s speeches as a kid,” Moreno said. “He was very influential in my life politically.”
During another podcast interview with Ohio Christian Alliance in October 2021, Moreno claimed he listened to Reagan when he started learning English.
“One of the presidents I got to really know a lot was Reagan because that was my formative years,” Moreno said. “I was just learning English. I’ve been fluent in Spanish as my first language. Learning the Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, the Constitution. This was a time that for me was so fortunate to have Ronald Reagan during those years for me.”
Moreno moved to the United States with his family from Colombia in 1971, when he was about five years old. During an appearance at the Turning Point Action Conference in July 2023, Moreno himself said that he learned English “pretty quickly” after moving to the United States. In a separate radio interview from May 2021, Moreno said he learned English when he was five. Moreno’s parents and older siblings were also fluent or proficient in English at this time, making it extremely unlikely that Moreno substantially “learned English” from Reagan speeches when he was five.
And Mother Jones highlighted his background as an employer:
In February 2015, Omar Adem was hired to sell Mercedes-Benzes at a Moreno dealership in Burlington, Massachusetts. According to a complaint Adem later filed, sales team members were regularly required to stay after shifts and report in on days off. But Moreno’s company, according to Adem’s complaint, refused to pay overtime if they earned commissions that matched or exceeded what they were owed. In November 2022, a judge ordered Adem and another employee be paid $416,160 in damages after a jury found both the dealership and Moreno individually liable for shorting pay.
In court, Moreno initially defended the pay practices, saying he acted in good faith and “committed no violation of law.” But during the trial, he was forced to admit to shredding overtime-payment records—documents the judge ruled he had been “required to preserve” and that he and his lawyers “knew or should have known [were] relevant.” On the campaign trail, Moreno has slammed that judge, a Republican appointee, as a “lunatic activist.” He has also assailed the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which unanimously upheld the state’s overtime rules in a related case, as “liberal,” even though five of its seven justices had been appointed by GOP Gov. Charlie Baker.
Before launching his 2024 run, Moreno settled more than a dozen other Massachusetts wage theft cases, all for undisclosed amounts. “When you’re stiffing workers out of their well-earned overtime pay, you’re a fraud,” says Totty.
While his campaign asserts that, “as a proud minority businessman,” Moreno has “always been committed to giving opportunities to all of his workers, regardless of race, color, gender, or creed,” several of his Ohio employees have alleged workplace bias and mistreatment. Cara Wilson, an Akron-area mother, sued Moreno for gender discrimination and wrongful termination after spending three months overhauling a struggling Acura dealership. Her suit alleged that, unlike “prior male managers,” she was “not permitted to make critical decisions” yet was nonetheless “blamed for the dealership’s poor performance.” Moreno told her she was “a bad leader but a better mother,” Wilson alleged, and another time angrily told her to “put your kids in fucking daycare.”
In June 2017, Ronell Thompson sued Moreno’s companies alleging “racially discriminatory pay practices” at an Infiniti dealership. After Thompson complained a white colleague with a lower title earned as much as he did, he received repeated warnings about his own performance based on false data, according to his lawsuit, before being demoted, transferred, given a pay cut, and ultimately fired.
And The New Republic also reminds how bad he is at being a candidate:
Trump-backed MAGA candidate Bernie Moreno, who is campaigning to oust longtime Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, walked himself into a faceplant on Thursday while attempting to tout his accessibility in contrast to his opponent.
“I can tell you this, if I’m here, I will talk to you at any point in time, even take tough questions. Sherrod Brown won’t do that,” Moreno declared before claiming Democrats shielded Biden from visibility to hide his physical decline. “If you can’t come out here and address the media and talk to reporters and give your position and be unequivocal and clear, you have no business being in elected office.”
Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio took Moreno up on this offer, asking if his position on abortion conflicts with the Republican Party’s new platform. Moreno responded, “Look, we’re not here to talk about abortion.”
It’s no wonder Republicans are hoping U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R. OH) being Trump’s running mate might help raise this sinking ship. But Innovation Ohio tested this theory and their data pops that balloon on that theory:
The test group received a message linking JD Vance and Bernie Moreno to the Trump agenda: “If elected in November, Ohioans JD Vance and Bernie Moreno will work together to implement the Trump agenda.”
After viewing their assigned messages, participants answered questions about their voting intentions and opinions of Bernie Moreno and JD Vance. Our test revealed that linking Vance and Moreno to the Trump agenda increased Moreno’s unfavorability by 9 percentage points.
Additionally, we found a 7 percentage point increase in vote choice for Sherrod Brown among respondents who viewed the message linking Moreno and Vance. Vance has had a rocky rollout, and these results confirm that his presence on the campaign trail (and on the ballot) does not yet provide a benefit to down-ballot candidates in his home state.
And Brown has a coalition of voters ready to go for him:
Unsurprisingly many of Brown’s backers come from organized labor. Representatives from the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union and the Ohio Federation of Teachers all sung his praises.
Tim Burga from the AFL-CIO pointed to Brown’s support for paid family leave, the expanded child tax credit and the PRO Act, which protects the right of employees to organize their workplaces.
“Sherrod is one of the few elected officials who not only talks, but also listens and then acts,” Burga said. “We never have to wonder about where Sherrod stands. He always stands with Ohio workers.”
Lynn Radcliffe from the SEIU put particular emphasis on Brown’s record for women in the workplace.
“He knows Ohio women aren’t looking for a handout, but are asking for a level playing field, including equal pay, paid family leave, and a pathway to the middle class,” she said. “Ohio labor, including women in labor. Labor have no better champion than Sherrod Brown.”
Melissa Cropper from the Ohio Federation of teachers praised Brown for supporting legislation to ensure educators and other public sector workers can receive their full social security benefits. Rep. Phil Robinson, D-Solon, brought up the senator’s support for My Brother’s Keeper, a mentorship program for young men of color.
Retired Air Force veteran Melissa Rodriguez highlighted Brown’s efforts to establish Space Force command at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
“Veterans across the state know that Sherrod takes action to address our needs,” Rodriguez said. “And when Sherrod learned about the devastating effects toxic burn pits were having on Ohio veterans, he jumped into action and passed the bipartisan legislation to ensure veterans have access to the health care and benefits they deserve.”
And DSCC Chairman, U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D. MI), has an op-ed piece out on MSNBC:
In Montana, a third-generation dirt farmer will face a dishonest, rich out-of-stater that real Montanans call a “wannabe cowboy.” In Ohio, a lifelong champion for workers is running against a deceitful car salesman who was successfully taken to court for wage theft, while media outlets have reported he’s playing fast and loose with his own biography on the campaign trail. In Arizona, the choice will be between a Marine who has defended our country and Kari Lake, who seems only interested in defending her power-mad lie that she won an election the courts said she lost.
Matches like these are playing out in every Senate race in states across the country.
It doesn’t seem like Senate Republicans are sending their best.
FYI:
Health, Democracy and Freedom are on the ballot next year and we need to get ready to flip Ohio Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Brown and his fellow Ohio Democrats campaigns:
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