Republican Bernie Moreno defeats incumbent Sherrod Brown for Ohio U.S. Senate seat, AP projects

Voters have elected Republican Bernie Moreno to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate according to projections from the Associated Press based on unofficial results. Moreno defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has held the office since 2006. Results remain unofficial until they are certified by local county boards of elections and the Ohio Secretary of State.

The Cleveland area businessman’s victory brings Brown’s time in the U.S. Senate to a close after 18 years. For the first time since Brown took office, Ohio will have two Republicans representing it in the chamber.

Moreno amassed a significant personal fortune through car dealerships. From there, he grew interested in blockchain, and started a company leveraging the technology for vehicle titles and registration. Democrats attempted to turn that success against Moreno — depicting the wealthy businessman as a “fat cat” and pointing to a string of wage theft cases filed against him.

Moreno, like J.D. Vance before him, rode Donald Trump’s endorsement to a primary election victory, and then hewed close to the former president’s rhetoric throughout the race. He hammered Brown on the economy and immigration, hanging the perceived failures of the Biden administration around the senator’s neck. In the final stretch of the campaign he and his allies pushed a series of anti-trans attacks against Brown.

Brown’s attempts at pushing back — touting his record protecting jobs, voting for bipartisan immigration reform and dismissing the anti-trans attack lines as specious — proved unsuccessful.

Still, Moreno took a rocky road to Election Day. Reproductive rights in particular have been an ongoing challenge for him. Moreno had to distance himself from the 100-percent pro-life no exceptions position he staked out in a brief 2022 run, and then had to distance himself from the 15-week ban he supported in this year’s primary after Trump attempted to wash his hands of the issue. Moreno made his job harder with campaign trail gaffes — most notably one in which he described it as “a little crazy” for older women to premise their vote on a candidate’s position on abortion.

Nick Evans has spent the past seven years reporting for NPR member stations in Florida and Ohio. He got his start in Tallahassee, covering issues like redistricting, same sex marriage and medical marijuana. Since arriving in Columbus in 2018, he has covered everything from city council to football. His work on Ohio politics and local policing have been featured numerous times on NPR.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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