COLUMBUS, Ohio — Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno won Ohio’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, just days after former President Donald Trump visited the state to boost his endorsed candidate in a three-way race that remained competitive to the end.
Republican Senate results
Moreno prevailed after a contentious and expensive fight against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Cleveland-area state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose relentless attacks may yet damage him headed into this fall. That’s when he’ll face off against three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a staple of Ohio politics who’s among the year’s most vulnerable Democrats.
The general election fight is expected to be at least as fierce in a state that has trended Republican in recent years. With Democrats holding a tenuous 51-49 voting majority in the Senate but defending more seats than Republicans, Brown’s seat is expected to be a top GOP target. He is the lone Democrat holding a non-judicial statewide office in Ohio, a state that has moved steadily to the right during the Trump era.
In a move that drew bipartisan rebukes, Senate Majority PAC, an independent group aligned with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, spent $2.7 million to elevate Moreno’s primary bid, with the idea that he would be the weakest against Brown this fall.
Brown is expected to make abortion rights a cornerstone of his campaign. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, Ohioans strongly supported a state constitutional amendment last year to protect access to the procedure.
Moreno, a former luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur, weathered controversy late in the campaign.
The Associated Press reported last week that in 2008, someone with access to Moreno’s work email account created a profile on an adult website seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex.” The AP could not definitively confirm that it was created by Moreno himself. Moreno’s lawyer said a former intern created the account and provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a juvenile prank.”
Questions about the profile have circulated in GOP circles for the past month, sparking frustration among senior Republican operatives about Moreno’s potential vulnerability in a general election, according to seven people who are directly familiar with conversations about how to address the matter. They requested anonymity to avoid running afoul of Trump and his allies.
Moreno, a native of Bogota, Colombia, who partially funded his own campaign, rode to victory after casting himself as a political outsider, who — like Trump — would go to Washington to shake things up. He and allied political action committees pilloried Dolan and LaRose as “career politicians.” He built his fortune in Cleveland in luxury auto sales and blockchain technology.
As LaRose struggled for a lane after failing to win Trump’s endorsement, Dolan worked to consolidate the party’s non-Trump faction in his corner in the runup to Election Day. He was helped in that effort with endorsements from Gov. Mike DeWine and former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, two of Ohio’s most prominent establishment Republicans.
DeWine is now getting behind Moreno, saying he talked to the businessman and is committed to helping him win in the fall.
"This is going to be an expensive race. It's going to be a very close race. It's going to be a hotly contested race," DeWine said. "It may ultimately determine actually which party controls the United States Senate. So, there's an awful lot at stake."
That's why it's estimated political ad spending could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars with the big issues being the economy, border security and abortion, if issues take center stage.
"I hope issues will be the central part of it. I think we're going to get a lot of personality," University of Dayton Political Science Professor Chris Devine said. "In a tight race like this you might get quite a bit of negative campaigning, some more credible than others."
LaRose, a former state senator and Green Beret elected twice statewide, raised more in grassroots donations of $200 or less than either of his rivals. He loaned himself $250,000, compared to $4.2 million Moreno loaned his own campaign and a whopping $9 million Dolan loaned to his.
Both Moreno and Dolan also competed in the 2022 Senate race, a messy and crowded contest won by Trump-backed memoirist and venture capitalist JD Vance. Moreno dropped out of the primary at Trump’s behest; Dolan finished third. Vance went on to win the general election that year against Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan.