CLEVELAND — Some Democrats working to re-elect Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio this fall are attempting to raise fears about his opponent’s Colombian family and heritage, drawing charges of racism from Republicans.
Bernie Moreno, a businessman who emigrated to the United States when he was a child, came here to “take advantage of America’s wealth and greatness,” Peg Watkins, the Democratic Party chair in Delaware County, a key area of the state that encompasses the affluent suburbs of Columbus, asserted at an event last week while warming up the crowd for Brown.
“So we are doing everything we can to stop him from invading our Senate,” Watkins added.
The remarks, first reported by Signal Ohio, follow ads from WinSenate, a political action committee aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that portray Moreno and his family as shadowy, politically connected figures with foreign allegiances.
Moreno hails from a wealthy and prominent family in Columbia, with several of his relatives having held high-ranking positions in business and government.
“Moreno’s powerful Colombian family funneled our money to Latin American banks for so-called development projects — projects his family invested millions in and then they funneled money back to Bernie, the perfect cover for Bernie to cash in,” a narrator says in one commercial. “Our tax dollars, a Moreno family windfall. Bernie Moreno only cares about himself.”
The rhetoric has become a late-emerging tension point in a race that could determine partisan control of the Senate. Republicans need to flip only two seats to ensure a majority next year, and West Virginia is seen as an almost-certain pickup. Ohio and Montana, two states where former President Donald Trump twice won by large margins, are the top two GOP targets.
Moreno, 57, has been a U.S. citizen for nearly 40 years. If elected next month, he would become Ohio’s first U.S. senator of color.
Responding to a question Tuesday from NBC News after casting his early vote in Cleveland, Moreno called the Democratic messaging “racist” and said that his campaign has asked that TV stations pull down WinSenate’s ad.
“The idea that you would question my integrity, or the idea that I would be somehow tied to illicit operations in South America is disgusting,” Moreno added. “It’s gross, and, quite frankly, I’m sick of it.”
Sarah Guggenheimer, a spokesperson for Senate Majority PAC, the Schumer-aligned political organization that includes WinSenate, defended the ad.
“Ohioans know Bernie Moreno only cares about continuing his family’s dynastic tradition of using political power to sell out hardworking families for their own gain,” Guggenheimer said in a written statement. “This nonsensical accusation is exactly what we’d expect from a candidate who finally took a break from stoking violence in Springfield and insulting women long enough to realize this race is rapidly slipping from his grasp.”
A spokesperson for Brown’s campaign declined to comment for this article. Watkins, the county chair, did not respond to requests for comment.
Some of the claims in the WinSenate spot stem from an Associated Press report about Moreno’s immigrant background. The article examined the complicated political and business dealings involving Moreno’s brothers and a cousin. His oldest brother, Luis Alberto Moreno, is a former Colombian ambassador to the U.S. and past president of the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank, which finances projects in Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The AP article also noted political donations those relatives have made to Moreno’s campaigns, but the article did not draw the sharp connections and conclusions that WinSenate did in its ad.
Immigration has been at the center of this year’s presidential and down-ballot campaigns, and Republicans have faced repeated scrutiny for how they talk about the issue. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, have spread unsubstantiated and racially charged rumors of Haitian immigrants eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio. Moreno, whom Trump has endorsed, has amplified the claims on social media.
Jai Chabria, a GOP strategist and Vance adviser who is not affiliated with Moreno’s campaign, said there’s a double standard in how the Democrats’ attacks are being covered compared with the attention given to Republicans’ racially charged rhetoric.
“The Democratic pundits believe this is the biggest toss up in the country. If the shoe was on the other foot, and this was said about a Democrat in this race, Jimmy Kimmel would be talking about it in his monologue,” Chabria said. “It’s OK to be a racist if you’re a Democrat.”
In a statement, Philip Letsou, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called the WinSenate ads “thinly-veiled racist attacks” on Moreno’s heritage.
“Now that they can see Ohio starting to slip away, the mask is fully off,” Letsou added. “Sherrod Brown must denounce these appalling, racist tactics and urge Chuck Schumer to immediately pull his ads attacking Moreno’s ethnicity off the air in the name of basic human decency.”
The WinSenate ads, including another commercial that scrutinizes Moreno and his “powerful Colombian family,” are part of a broader effort by the PAC, Brown and other outside Democratic groups to characterize him as an untrustworthy leader with flimsy ethics. They have focused on Moreno’s days as a car dealer, citing past lawsuits over workplace discrimination and overtime pay against his companies.
The Ohio race is one of the most expensive in the country this fall, with total ad spending exceeding $100 million since Sept. 1. Brown, the only Democrat to consistently win statewide elections in Ohio, is seeking a fourth term. Moreno, who briefly ran for Senate in 2022 but dropped out before the primary, is a prominent former car dealer in the Cleveland area.
Recent polls have shown a close battle between Brown and Moreno, within the margin of error.
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