With Tuesday's vote mostly counted, Northeast Ohio businessman Bernie Moreno is the clear winner of the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, according to News 5 election partner Decision Desk HQ.
With 88% of the results in, Moreno garnered over half the support of Republican primary voters with 50.5%. State Sen. Matt Dolan trailed with 32.9% and Sec. of State Frank LaRose with 16.6%.
The Republican will now face off against longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.
His campaign was catapulted by endorsements from former President Donald Trump and current U.S. Senator J.D. Vance.
See results for this and other statewide and local primary elections here.
Moreno kicks off face-off against Brown
After securing the projected win, Moreno went on the offensive against his November election opponent in his victory speech to supporters.
"In 1789, when Sherrod Brown went into DC, I never thought we'd be here with him still in office," Moreno joked to laughs from the crowd. "In all seriousness, this guy has been in office since Richard Nixon was president. Never had a job in the private sector.
"And what does he do? He says he advocates for working-class Americans. Let's dissect that for a second. Under Sherrod Brown's watch, China has gone from a $4 billion trade deficit to a $230 billion a year trade deficit with America. The middle class in this country has shrank under his watch. We have lost factory after factory under his watch."
Brown responds to Moreno's win
Brown released the following statement moments after Moreno was projected to be the winner: “Ohioans know I have always stood by them to make sure their hard work pays off and will stand up to anyone who gets in the way. The choice ahead of Ohio is clear: Bernie Moreno has spent his career and campaign putting himself first and would do the same if elected. Elections come down to whose side you’re on, and I’ll always work for Ohio – from standing up to special interests taking advantage of Ohio workers and corporations raising costs for families to making sure our veterans get the healthcare they earned.”
About Moreno
Moreno is a wealthy entrepreneur from Cleveland who formerly sold luxury cars and is now in the cryptocurrency world.
In an interview with News 5, he touched on hot topics.
He is an immigrant from Columbia and wants to clamp down on illegal immigration.
"Here's how it gets fixed," he said. "If you come into this country illegally you can't claim asylum. If you come into this country through a legal port of entry, we're not going to release you into the country until your claim is heard. You're going to have to stay in Mexico or Canada. We're going to finish the wall, we're going to wipe out the drug cartels and we're going to deport any human being that's in the United States of America illegally must be deported. You do those five things? We have a sovereign and secure country and a secure border."
He wants the federal government involved in abortion access, despite Republicans previously demanding states should get to control it. This has been a trend nationwide as voters continue to protect reproductive healthcare, including in Ohio. Each state that has put the option of abortion on the ballot has protected it.
"As much as there's a federal role, we can get to a place where there's a 15-week floor standard that says after 15 weeks we have common sense restrictions that don't allow elective late-term abortions, and we can have consensus around this issue once and for all," he said. "I would vote for a national standard that says after 15 weeks we have common sense restrictions that again eliminate elective late-term abortions," he said.
Watch Moreno and the other candidates speak about abortion:
He also thinks there should be more support for pregnant women.
"We got to put policies in place that make it less expensive to have children, less expensive to raise children, make certain that women have access to good healthcare," he said. "Let's make sure that adoption services are more readily available, let's make certain that we fund pregnancy centers that really take care of women, not only while they're having the baby, but afterward, and defund organizations like Planned Parenthood, which are basically abortion mills."
Moreno also thinks the U.S. should not be sending more money to Ukraine.
“We've already spent $110 billion, another $60 billion to have a bloody stalemate doesn't accomplish anything,” he added. “What we need to do is we need to drive towards peace. We need to make certain that we put a peaceful settlement of that conflict and end it and move on and not fund another stalemate.”
