Trump favorite wins Ohio Senate nomination after grueling GOP primary

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown will face former luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno in November, after a bitter Republican primary, some Democratic meddling, and a crucial Donald Trump endorsement.

Moreno, 57, prevailed over state Sen. Matt Dolan, who outspent him on TV and grabbed an 11th hour endorsement from Gov. Mike DeWine, who said that the wealthy Dolan had a better chance in November.

Republican primary voters disagreed, with Moreno dominating the Election Day vote — all of it cast after an Associated Press story linked the candidate to a 2008 adult hook-up page, which Moreno blamed on an old intern’s prank. Dolan turned that story into last-minute ads, to no avail, as Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance rallied for Moreno.

“This is what they do,” Moreno said on Friday. “Look at what they did to Judge Kavanaugh, look at what they did to President Trump.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, known for spearheading the state GOP’s failed effort to head off a ballot initiative guaranteeing abortion access, finished a distant third.

Democrats were cautiously optimistic about the results in Ohio; their Duty and Country super PAC went on the air over the final weekend, with ads “warning” that Moreno was too conservative and too close to Trump — effectively boosting him in his primary.

He wasn’t always that way. Moreno ran for the state’s other U.S. Senate seat in 2022, scrubbing some of his political commentary — including a 2016 interview where he worried that he couldn’t vote for Trump at all, and Jan. 2021 tweets blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection. He ran as a born-again MAGA candidate, going on air early.

He lost traction and dropped out three months before the primary, after an in-person meeting with Trump. “We both agreed this race has too many Trump candidates and could cost the MAGA movement a conservative seat,” he explained. When Trump endorsed Vance, Moreno followed suit. Vance won the expensive primary with 32% of the vote, and last May, he returned the favor by endorsing Moreno.

The Colombia-born multi-millionaire ran as a pure MAGA candidate this time, opposed to new Ukraine funding and praising Trump’s character (“He’s a good man, and we need more people to say that loudly and clearly.”) In his final debate with Dolan, he chided the state senator for not endorsing Trump during the GOP primary, and waiting to make his support official after Nikki Haley dropped out.

• In Politico, Jonathan Martin reported on how winnable the race looked to the old, pre-MAGA GOP — and how the state of John Bricker and Bob Taft could now “determine whether Ohio will return to its isolationist roots and send two senators to Washington who are uneasy about projecting American force abroad.”