Bernie Moreno joins Donald Trump Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy for South Ohio campaign stop

From left, Bernie Moreno, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Donald Trump, Jr. speaking before a campaign rally in Butler County. (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)

In Butler County Wednesday, Donald Trump, Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy campaigned with Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. The visit marks one of the race’s first examples of national surrogates making a campaign swing through the state.

Immigration

They visited Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester Township, just north of Cincinnati. The suburban honkytonk hosts line dancing on Tuesdays and live concerts on the weekend. The walls are lined with portraits of country stars — Willie Nelson, Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift. Posters promote the upcoming Voices of America festival headlined by Jason Aldean, Keith Urban and Sam Hunt.

Urban grew up and began his career in Australia.

Several of the people who turned up are already planning to support Moreno. Linda Ryan from Maineville, described meeting him previously. “He talked to me like this,” she said, leaning in closer.

“Everything he said, I agree with,” she explained. “The biggest thing being the border, everything. All the inflation, all of it.”

Her friend Sheila Wagner cited immigration as her primary issue as well, and expressed anger at ads suggesting Moreno is “for open borders.”

“That makes my blood pressure boil,” she said. “That is the exact opposite of what he’s for.”

In 2016 at least, Moreno argued for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants , particularly those who came to the U.S. as children. But at Lori’s Roadhouse, he reiterated his more recent, maximalist position on immigration.

“We’re gonna have the largest deportation in American history,” he promised, “And we’re gonna get rid of anybody in this country who’s here illegally. I am a legal immigrant. I find it insanely offensive to see this country reward people who skipped the line and broke our laws.”

It’s a commitment his opponents have criticized as unrealistic, but it’s rhetoric that earned praise from the crowd as well as Ramaswamy and Trump, Jr.

“If there’s one person who, probably in the Senate, can speak to that issue with personal authority, more than anybody else, it’s actually going to be this man,” Ramaswamy said of Moreno. “That’s why he’s the right man to take Sherrod Brown out and finally solidify Ohio as the red state that we are.”

Who’s the real MAGA candidate?

Just as important as immigration, however, was parsing who’s truly loyal to Donald Trump.

Moreno’s GOP opponents, state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, have made plenty of appeals to Trump supporters. Dolan argues neither of his competitors have done more to actually enact the former president’s policies. LaRose brags about getting Trump’s endorsement in his 2022 reelection bid and argues he’ll be a steadfast ally to the president if they’re both elected in November.

But Trump’s brand of politics is less about policy than patronage. Candidates can stack up “MAGA” accomplishments, but among his supporters, Trump’s personal imprimatur often matters more. And Trump Jr. was unequivocal about the Ohio’s Republican field.

“Republicans have moved away from the Washington D.C. swamp establishment,” Trump Jr. argued. “If you want the party of Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, that’s (Moreno’s) competition. Bernie Moreno is the only America first candidate in this race.”

He implored the crowd to “make sure everyone knows Bernie is our guy. Bernie is my father’s guy.”

Moreno cast the race in similar terms, arguing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to step down as leader offers a chance for the party to align behind Trump.

“We can’t have a repeat of 2017 and ’18,” Moreno argued. “We’re gonna make certain that when President Trump gets reelected, that the entirety of the Republican Party in the Senate in the House actually follows the agenda, that we go in there and actually get those things done.”

A sign at the Moreno rally in Butler County. (Photo by Nick Evans for Ohio Capital Journal.)

Trump’s backing moved the needle for Karen McCormick. Speaking outside after the event, she described herself as a Trump fan, so she came to see Trump Jr. speak about Moreno. McCormick plans to support Moreno but she had nothing bad to say about his opponents.

“Trump backs him,” she said of Moreno. “That makes a big difference to me.” And if Trump had declined to endorse, she explained, “I would’ve had to do my research.”

In truth, there isn’t an enormous amount of daylight between the candidates on most issues. Aid for Ukraine remains a notable exception. LaRose and Dolan both favor continued support, while Moreno, like Trump, opposes it.

In a press release, LaRose attempted to draw another distinction. He questioned Moreno’s commitment to gun rights and wondered aloud why “two strong supporters of the Second Amendment” would campaign with him.

“Sometimes even the good guys get it wrong,” he said of Trump Jr. and Ramaswamy, “but Ohioans won’t fall for Bernie’s election-year conversion. They want a senator who respects the Second Amendment and one who is not just another liberal masquerading as a conservative.”

But in a telling indication of how the party has shifted since Trump’s emergence, defending the Second Amendment — for years, one of the most reliable GOP applause lines available — simply didn’t come up.

Reproductive rights

The rally’s location in suburban Butler County presents an interesting test case in recent elections. In 2020 and 2022, Republicans dominated at the top of the ticket with candidates winning more than 60% of the vote. But when voters weighed last year’s ballot initiatives that advantage evaporated.

In the August election to determine whether to increase the threshold for passing constitutional amendments — broadly understood as an attempt to undermine an upcoming reproductive rights amendment — Butler County voters said yes, but just barely. On a yes or no question, neither side was able to get a majority.

On the reproductive rights amendment itself, Butler County voters narrowly voted in favor of protecting access to abortion.

Republican candidates, including Moreno , have insisted they won’t let the 2024 election become another referendum on abortion rights, but Republicans themselves keep frustrating that effort. From former president Donald Trump taking credit for the repeal of Roe v. Wade , to all three of Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate candidates signing on to federal abortion restrictions, to an Alabama Supreme Court ruling threatening access to in-vitro fertilization , or IVF, reproductive policy can’t seem to stay on the back burner.

Still, Moreno brushed off threats to IVF as “a manufactured issue” and despite backing a federal 15-week abortion ban, he argued similar protections for IVF are unnecessary.

“I think the states can work it out. I’m confident that Alabama will work it out. Let’s let the states do their thing,” he said.

“This is a non-issue,” Moreno insisted. “This is a left-wing, media-created issue.”

At the time of publishing, three fertility clinics in Alabama have halted IVF procedures . Alabama state lawmakers have begun hearings for a handful of bills protecting the treatment but their timeline is uncertain. Federal IVF protections were blocked Wednesday by U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-MS.

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.

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