Bernie Moreno, 2024 US Senate candidate, speaks in Lancaster, Ohio
US Senate candidate Bernie Moreno states he will serve only two terms; calls out Biden during campaign stop in Lancaster, Ohio Aug 9, 2024
There are a few things Bernie Moreno wants Ohio voters to know about him.
He built a chain of luxury car dealerships. He’s a father and a husband whose wife, he jokes, would leave if he serves more than than two terms in the U.S. Senate. When he was a child, Moreno and his family immigrated from Colombia to the United States in search of a new life.
That last point, in many ways, has defined Moreno’s U.S. Senate campaign against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. He often points out his family entered the U.S. legally, contrasting himself with undocumented immigrants who have drawn the ire of Republicans. Like former President Donald Trump, Moreno paints a picture of chaos at the southern border.
To state the obvious, Ohio does not share a border with Mexico. But experts say the GOP’s fixation on immigration has forced Democrats − including Brown − to play defense and present positions that combine Republican hawkishness with a humanitarian bent.
Cue the ads touting Brown’s efforts to crack down on fentanyl trafficking and allocate more resources to border patrol agents. The three-term senator is one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country, and his reelection bid against Moreno could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
“If Democrats had it their way, they would never talk about immigration,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a professor who specializes in immigration law at Ohio State University.
From Colombian wealth to new start in Florida
Moreno has talked often about his journey from Colombia to South Florida.
Moreno arrived in the U.S. with his mother and siblings just before his fifth birthday. Life in Colombia was cushy: He told the Up2 podcast that his parents came from “outsized privilege,” and his father served in a job similar to secretary of health. The family had multiple houses in Colombia, and his father’s childhood home was so large it eventually became the German embassy.
But his mother wanted something different for her children, Moreno said − a life that prized hard work over inherited fortune. That’s how she and her seven kids wound up in Fort Lauderdale, with Moreno’s father following later.
Roberto Moreno, the candidate’s brother and a Colombian construction magnate, told a local media outlet the move was intended to be temporary, but circumstances changed. The family also wasn’t new to the United States: Roberto Moreno and two of his siblings were born in Philadelphia while his father studied surgery.
Moreno previously told USA TODAY Network Ohio that life changed drastically for his family in Florida. They sold trinkets at flea markets to make extra money, he said, and Moreno started working when he was 12 years old. His sister, Vicky Stockamore, said she paid her own way through community college because her parents couldn’t afford to help at the time.
Before long, however, Bernardo and Marta Moreno enjoyed successful careers in medicine and real estate. By 1987, Marta Moreno had sold $80 million in real estate over a 15-year period, according to the Fort Lauderdale News.
Brown’s allies have accused Moreno of painting a rags-to-riches story that doesn’t align with his childhood. And the New York Times found the family’s time in Florida was more nuanced than Moreno describes: Their first condo boasted a private beach and pool, and they later moved into a four-bedroom home with help from Moreno’s step-grandfather.
“Sherrod Brown will never know the level of sacrifice my parents went through to come to the United States,” Moreno said. “It’s disgraceful that he and his cronies continue to repeatedly smear them, especially when Sherrod himself grew up with a silver spoon, as the son of a wealthy doctor.”
Border security dominates Ohio Senate race
Moreno leans on his background as he hammers Brown on border security and calls for undocumented immigrants to be deported − even though he once supported a pathway to citizenship for those living here.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection encounters have soared since the border reopened following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to federal data. The year 2023 ended with about 301,000 encounters in December, although that number tapered off in recent months and dropped to 104,000 in July.
García Hernández said President Joe Biden has “evolved rather dramatically” since he pledged to undo Trump’s border policies on the campaign trail. In recent months, USA TODAY reported, Biden unveiled plans to protect undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation while authorizing the U.S. to turn away migrants when crossings are high.
“Politicians in Washington forget that (the immigration system) is actually operating quite well for many, many people,” García Hernández said. “The reason why it’s easy to overlook that is because there’s political value in imagining chaos, confusion, disorder in communities that most of them have never visited.”
Biden and other Democrats, including Brown, supported bipartisan legislation that would have made it harder for people to qualify for asylum but allowed migrants to stay in the U.S. if they could claim credible fear. Senate Republicans derailed the bill after Trump came out against it.
Moreno called the measure a “political stunt” intended to help Biden on the campaign trail. He also came out against a foreign aid package signed by Biden that included Brown’s fentanyl bill. Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn, a Republican, said the law is “the most powerful thing that I have seen” to tackle fentanyl trafficking.
Even still, ads from Moreno and his allies have repeatedly attacked Brown on the border, something many Americans think the government has handled poorly. Brown accused Republicans of using immigration to distract from other problems, such as inflation and high drug prices.
“I don’t know what else Moreno has, frankly, to criticize,” Brown said. “All their ads seem to be border ads. We will continue to work to get that bill passed in this fall, I hope, but probably not because they’ll block it. Then next year, we will work to pass it. But ask him why he’s talked so much about this issue.”
USA TODAY reporter Riley Beggin contributed.
Haley BeMiller is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 15:06:00
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