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Weekend at Nardo’s: Ohio GOP Primary Skullduggery Surprises Surface

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Aw, you just knew it had to happen. The gosh darn Ohio Republicans had fat, dumb (mostly dumb), and hapless Sherrod Brown ripe for picking up his senate seat and…?

The big, blue foot of Fate comes out of the sky once again.

There are three people running for the GOP nomination for senate to challenge incumbent and ever-repulsive Sherrod Brown.

Leading in the polls for Tuesday’s primary – and besting Brown in head-to-heads as well – is OH state senator Matt Dolan. He’s just gotten the endorsement of the state’s governor, Mike DeWine. He’s also a member of the family that owns the Cleveland guardians baseball team.

…On Monday evening, Gov. Mike DeWine endorsed state Sen. Matt Dolan, one of the three candidates running for the Republican nomination, calling Dolan a “proven conservative” who is best-equipped to defeat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. The move was uncharacteristic of DeWine, who recently said he didn’t expect to endorse and generally hasn’t gotten involved in contentious inter-party squabbles. But he joined former Sen. Rob Portman, who endorsed Dolan on Friday, as the latest prominent longtime Ohio Republican to throw their backing behind the Chagrin Falls Republican.

The number two GOP candidate is a fellow named Bernie Moreno, a Westlake, OH, businessman and the guy who grabbed what many consider the brass ring – a Trump endorsement. It’s an active one, too, as the former president is supposed to be holding a rally for his chosen player tomorrow.

…Then, just hours later, ex-President Donald Trump announced that he will travel to Ohio this Saturday to hold a rally for his endorsed candidate, Westlake businessman Bernie Moreno. It previously hadn’t been clear whether Trump would be coming — Moreno said he was unsure when he was asked on Monday afternoon — but the development will ensure thousands of Ohio Trump fans will hear a direct sales pitch on why they should elect someone to one of the country’s most important offices they almost certainly had not have heard of until just recently.

The third candidate is Ohio’s Secretary of State, Frank LaRose. He’s not making quite as big a splash as the other two, part of which is attributable to being wounded by angling for the Trump blessing and not receiving it. But it’s still a dogfight. 

A really dirty dogfight, as many of these GOP primaries have been turning into for the past decade or so. Why wait to draw blood in the general when you can shiv the crap out of people in your own party?

Republicans are worried as the Ohio Senate primary breaks out into an all-out brawl

The three-way race has turned brutal in the final stretch.

Now, some of this could well be Politico fanning the GOP is “bloodthirsty and out of control” flames to help Brown, but I’ve also seen it happen here locally.

The Republican Senate primary in Ohio has turned nasty, negative and chaotic. Again.

The race to face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is a three-way contest between state Sen. Matt Dolan, business executive Bernie Moreno and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. And the relative peace that held for months of campaigning has been shattered by what has become an all-out brawl in the final leg of the race.

Moreno compared Dolan to anti-Trump Republicans Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, and said LaRose will “lie through his teeth to get political power.” Dolan called Moreno a “phony” and he concluded that LaRose’s mishandling of a constitutional amendment on abortion rights “dismisses” him from the race. LaRose said Moreno is “very liberal” and is part of the “corporate elite” and that Dolan is an “anti-gun guy” with a “very shoddy” abortion record.

I’ll bet the mailers voters are receiving from the different PACs – probably many of them near untraceable – supporting these guys are inflammatory as all get out.

It seems the national Senate Republicans tried a “y’all behave now” to no avail.

…This election cycle, Senate Republicans moved to quickly shut down ugly primaries and coalesce support behind their preferred candidates. It worked in other places, but not Ohio. The National Republican Senatorial Committee and its chair, Steve Daines (R-Mont.), urged each of the three campaigns to refrain from going negative until they felt it was absolutely necessary, according to a person familiar with their strategy. Party strategists were pleased the candidates honored that request for much of the contest.

But now, the bloodbath has arrived. Republicans are watching anxiously.

And, welp – besides the bloodbath, the pre-primary surprise has, too. And it’s a humdinger.

Trump-backed Senate candidate faces GOP worries that he could be linked to adult website profile

…But ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, there’s mounting anxiety inside the GOP that Bernie Moreno may emerge with the nomination. After vaulting into the top tier of contenders with a coveted endorsement from Donald Trump, Moreno — who has shifted from a public supporter of LGBTQ rights to a hardline opponent — is 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.

“Hi, looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling,” reads a caption on a photo-less profile under the username “nardo19672,” according to an Associated Press review of records made public through a massive and well-publicized data breach of the website. Records also show the profile was last accessed about six hours after it was created.

So a profile on an adult website made 16 years ago that was only accessed that one time, and found through a data breach.

The microscope they use to crawl up orifices is YUGE and piercing.

For the record, candidate Moreno says he had nothing to do with it. Moreno’s lawyer says a former intern did it as a prank and has even written a “mea culpa” explaining.

… On Thursday evening, two days after the AP first asked Moreno’s campaign about the account, the candidate’s lawyer said a former intern created the account as a prank. The lawyer provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a juvenile prank.”

“I am thoroughly embarrassed by an aborted prank I pulled on my friend, and former boss, Bernie Moreno, nearly two decades ago,” Ricci said. The AP couldn’t independently confirm Ricci’s statement and he didn’t immediately respond to messages left for him on multiple phone numbers listed to him. He donated $6,599 to Moreno’s campaign last year, according to campaign finance records.

Moreno’s lawyer, Charles Harder, insisted Moreno “had nothing to do with the AFF account.”

Now, in Moreno’s defense, however the AP tries to infer that he’s dissembling about the account, their own research validates everything that the intern said as far as who had access to the work email used for the profile, etc. 

But whoever found this thing, regardless of who actually did it, has managed to put Moreno on the spot having to deny it. And that’s the pay-off in a race where Moreno has been trying to put some distance between what appear to be his formerly openly expressed views on the LGB-whatever community. Moreno, according to what he’s said, also has a son who is gay.

…During a 2016 question and answer session posted to his company’s YouTube page, Moreno noted that his eldest son is gay, while crediting the TV show “Modern Family” with changing perceptions about same-sex marriage.

“We watched these two guys and, we say: ’You know what? They’re good guys, they’re great people. … They are not this distorted thing that is out there.’ And I think those are the kinds of ways that you can break down stereotypes,” Moreno said during the event.

When fliers appeared on the campus of Cleveland State University in October 2017 urging gay and transgender students to commit suicide, Moreno, who was then chairman of the school’s board of trustees, was the leading signer of a letter condemning the “abhorrent message” as “an attack on our whole campus.”

As recently as 2020, his companies were included on a list of Ohio businesses that supported a law banning discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Leaders of Equality Ohio, a leading LGBTQ rights group in the state, said Moreno joined the campaign supporting the legislation after a conversation with the organization’s leadership in 2017 during event promoting the bill.

But that all appeared to change when Moreno first ran for Senate in 2021 before bowing out of the race early. He began to distance himself from his past activism, professing to be unfamiliar with the anti-discrimination legislation, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported at the time.

But what I’m reading in this AP report doesn’t lead me to believe Moreno is anti-gay at all. Everything negative he has to say and that the article references (after the above paragraph) has to do with TRANS related issues and indoctrination. Is this the problem? And is this why they came after him for a salacious but nebulous, photo-less profile on an ancient website – because he’s bucking the trans part of the alphabet sex soup agenda?

I don’t know, but Moreno’s gone after the other guys hard for being acquiescent to the trans-lobby. 

…During his current Senate campaign, Moreno has accused advocates for LGBTQ rights of advancing a “radical” agenda of “indoctrination.” He is endorsed by Ohio Value Voters, a group that opposes LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage. And his campaign’s social media accounts have blasted his opponents, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and State Sen. Matt Dolan, as supporters of a “radical trans agenda.”

Obviously, those thrusts from Moreno at the other two have scored hits.

…And the attacks clearly rattle their various targets. LaRose devoted some of his speech to the Lake County GOP to stressing that he does not support gender-transition surgeries for minor children.

“I don’t think that the attacks that have been lodged against me are things that Ohioans believe, ridiculous things like that I’m for the radical trans agenda,” he said in an interview after his speech.

To be fair, there’s plenty of red-meat material available.

…During a recent pro-Moreno rally, Donald Trump Jr. took a jab at Dolan over the renaming of his family’s baseball team.

“If you’re willing to change the name of the Cleveland Indians to appease like three woke lunatics, what knee won’t you bend when you get to Washington, D.C.?” the younger Trump said.

Buckeye Leadership Fund, a super PAC supporting Dolan, has a microsite up dubbed “Which Bernie?,” which compares some of Moreno’s past policy positions to those of liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Among issues it raises is that Moreno supported bringing the Gay Games to Cleveland, which was described at the time as “a major win” for the city’s economy.

LaRose also is being attacked for appearing to support the LGBTQ+ community.

Ads featuring footage from a short video he recorded congratulating Equality Ohio, an LGBTQ+ rights organization, on its 30th anniversary, call him “too liberal for Ohio.” LaRose said he viewed the recording as “a nice gesture” toward a group whose policy positions don’t align with this own — “because I’m the secretary of state for all Ohioans.”

The gay profile story breaking yesterday might be the coup de grâce hitting Moreno where it hurts. Other polls in today that were done last week have him trailing pretty significantly among “undecideds.”

Moreno’d better hope Trump can whip up some mojo that works to pull those numbers back up. I’m sure glad I won’t be trying to watch TV in Ohio this weekend. I can’t imagine the barrage of last-minute ads.

In the meantime, creepy Sherrod Brown strolls through his ads in fields of daisies – hugging babies, veterans, and steelworkers while bragging about how much money he’s given away—all while spending nothing from his substantial war chest.

Sheesh.

Could we, for once, dispense with the internecine knife fighting until we have a Democratic opponent?



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