Crypto-Criminals Spending Millions To Elect Moreno
Outside SuperPAC spending against Sherrod Brown is racing towards $200 million, with massive spends from shady operations like the Koch network and organized crime (the crypto-criminals alone have spent $40.1 million boosting the like-minded Bernie Moreno). Yesterday, Jasper Goodman reported “Ohio’s Senate race is the crypto world’s biggest— and riskiest— gamble of the 2024 cycle. The crypto super PAC Defend American Jobs has spent more than $40 million supporting Republican Bernie Moreno, a longtime crypto evangelist whose race against Senate Banking Chair Brown is critical to determining control of the upper chamber. A win for Republicans in the Buckeye State would all but guarantee GOP control of the Senate. It would deliver a vocal ally in Moreno and eliminate one of the sector’s most powerful critics in Brown, who is a major roadblock to crypto-friendly legislation. But the Ohio spending spree also carries significant risk for the crypto firms. If Brown survives, he would likely remain the Banking Committee’s top Democrat and would potentially have a substantial impact on future policymaking.” McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund has spent even more attacking Brown— $55.5 million… and rising.
And all that right-wing spending has started taking its toll as Moreno, who purchased Trump's endorsement in the primary with a personal bribe, turns the Senate race into a neck-and-neck slug-fest:
One of the Republican lies being pounded into the heads of Ohio voters is that Brown backs allowing transgender men to participate in women’s sports, a claim recently investigated and then debunked by PolitiFact. McConnell, himself a closet queen well-known to all Louisville’s FruitLoop male hustlers, has put millions of dollars into deceptive transphobic ads.
And it goes well beyond just Moreno's reputation for being a deceptive used car salesman who cheated his customers and swindled his own employees, and then lied about it in court again and again. This is the latest TV ad that Brown has been running to let voters know that the GOP is making the whole transgender panic thing up:
And when it comes to deceit, that could be Moreno’s middle name. Everything about him is a lie— even including his own closet case status! (No wonder McConnell is spending all that money on him!) On Monday, Martin Pengelly reported that though Moreno claims he learned to speak English by listening to Reagan’s speeches (a lie), he’s “displayed a distinctly un-Reaganlike tendency to dodge responsibility for questions about his own actions, choosing repeatedly to blame others instead, a review of reporting and court documents shows. Last month, after Moreno was shown to have falsely claimed to hold an MBA from the University of Michigan, including signing legal documents containing the claim, his campaign blamed ‘a staffer who made a mistake.’… The episode of the phantom MBA is not the only one in which Moreno has blamed others for alleged missteps.”
He dodged property taxes and blamed a relative and there are repeated instances of him lying to cheat his employees.
In January, multiple outlets reported a Massachusetts case from 2017 in which Moreno was sued for non-payment of overtime at his auto company. According to court records, a judge said Moreno “either did not retain or shredded … monthly reports” that he “knew or should have known” he was required to keep. Ultimately, a jury found Moreno liable for withholding wages and ordered him to pay $416,160 in damages.
Moreno also blamed the plaintiffs, whom he called “two of my worst salespeople, the guys that never even showed up on time, who didn’t punch in or punch out, who had no proof that they worked overtime”, and blamed the overtime pay issue on a staff member who he said “actually managed payroll”. In court, the staffer testified that she had not been responsible for such matters.
More luridly, back in March, the AP reported that Moreno, who it said had “shifted from a public supporter of LGBTQ+ rights to a hardline opponent” was “confronting questions about the existence of a 2008 profile seeking ‘Men for 1-on-1 sex’ on a casual sexual encounters website called Adult Friend Finder.”
Moreno’s lawyer said the candidate was not behind the account, and provided a statement in which a former Moreno intern, Dan Ricci, said he created the account as “a juvenile prank.”
Yesterday, we noted that former Ohio Governor, Bob Taft, a conservative Republican who backs Trump, has formally endorsed Sherrod Brown. At the same time, the Columbus Dispatch ran an OpEd by Linda Smith a Republican from Mansfield, who wrote that she “voted, along with 57% of Ohioans, to pass Issue 1 last year to ensure a woman's personal healthcare and reproductive decisions stay between her and her doctor and to make sure these rights are protected and available for current and future generations of Ohio women and families. Republican nominee Bernie Moreno doesn't respect our vote or respect our will. I won't be voting for him.”
She wrote that “Moreno is on tape openly stating at an event with supporters: ‘There's a lot of single-issue— you know, the left has a lot of single-issue voters. Sadly, by the way, there's a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like “listen, abortion is it. If I can't have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.” Ok, a little crazy, by the way. But, especially for women that are like past 50, I'm thinking to myself, I don't think that's an issue for you. Oh, thank God my wife didn't hear that one, I was going to get in trouble.’” Smith noted that aside from being a registered Republican and a woman who voted to legalize abortion, she’s also over 50.
Moreno has a lot more to be concerned about than whether his wife heard him make degrading and demeaning comments regarding women's concerns over their healthcare rights.
His comments were not a "tongue in cheek joke" as his campaign said later while trying to spin damage control.
His tone and words were offensive. He insulted women and mocked them for caring about making their own healthcare decisions and wanting the ability to make these decisions without interference from people like him.
The fact that Moreno thinks it is "a little crazy" that women of all political parties, of all zip codes, and of all ages care so deeply about this issue makes it clear that he does not share our values and that he thinks he knows better than the majority of Ohioans.
The comments also showed Bernie Moreno's true character. They showed his lack of respect for the women and men of Ohio who voted to ensure that their personal and often complex emotionally difficult healthcare choices remain a private, personal decision between them and their physicians— without interference from politicians.
And they showed that Moreno would not respect or represent the will of the majority of his constituents. While Ohio voters overwhelmingly passed Issue 1 last fall, Moreno supports a national abortion ban which would overturn the will of Ohio voters. He is literally campaigning on overturning the will of Ohioans who have made their position on this issue clear.
It raises the question: what other issues would he disregard his constituents on?
Contrary to Moreno's opinion, I am not crazy to want Ohioans to have the right to make their own healthcare decisions or have access to life saving care. I am not a single-issue voter.
What should be of concern to him is that I will not be voting for Bernie Moreno, the candidate who thinks he knows better than Ohio women and men and doesn't care where we stand.
As a Republican who has stood proudly with all Ohioans, regardless of backgrounds or political affiliations, we need to turn out again to keep Bernie Moreno from reaching the U.S. Senate.
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