Republican Bernie Moreno defeated Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) after the incumbent centered attacks on Moreno’s background in the auto industry, part of the GOP wave that had them reclaim the U.S. Senate and returned Donald Trump to the Oval Office.
As of Thursday with 99 percent of the vote counted, Moreno received 2,803,634 votes (50.2 percent) to Brown’s 2,592,539 (46.4 percent) and Libertarian Party nominee Don Kissick 189,377 (3.4%).
“This is a new dawn of Republican leadership,” Moreno told supporters the night of the election. “When President Trump and JD Vance are in the White House, we are going to advance an agenda that is an American agenda, an agenda that says we are pro-immigration, but not pro-invasion…What we’re going to do is massively reduce the size and scale of the federal government and we’re going to do it from Congress, because it’s Congress that has the power of the purse.”
Moreno’s Auto Background
Born in Bogota, Colombia, Moreno’s family brought him to the U.S. at age five and he became a citizen at 18. Trump has called him a “MAGA fighter.”
Before running for Senate, Moreno built a chain of luxury car dealerships based in northeast Ohio before exiting the industry in 2019. Later, he started a company to digitize car titles using blockchain. At the same time, Moreno fielded criticism for dozens of lawsuits he faced as a car dealer, including cases in Massachusetts that accused him of not paying overtime to employees.
Brown’s first ad of the campaign centered on that issue, interspersing clips of Moreno, appearing in commercials promoting his former network of Cleveland-area car dealerships, with news headlines that describe Moreno stretching the truth. “You couldn’t trust him as a car dealer, so why would you trust him as a senator?” says the narrator.
Reagan McCarthy, spokeswoman for Moreno, told Automotive News they appreciated support from the auto industry as “Sherrod Brown made a pivotal mistake by attacking Bernie for simply being a car dealer, and the industry did not take kindly to Brown’s disgusting attack.”
Dealer’s Backing
Supporters of the GOP candidate fired back at Brown, a pro-union lawmaker who supported the UAW for many years and walked the picket line with striking Stellantis workers last year, at the time for airing a “despicable” ad.
“Sherrod Brown’s comments—aimed at earning cheap political points—are a slap in the face to hardworking Ohioans in the auto sales industry across our state,” said Tim Glockner, president of Glockner Chevrolet in Portsmouth and the most recent Ohio nominee for NADA dealer of the year.
Joseph Chapman of Chapman Ford added, “thousands of Ohioans are employed in various capacities across the auto industry, and our senior senator chose to mock our jobs on the airwaves. Sherrod Brown has never had a job outside of government and has no idea what it takes.”
