Moreno Hammers Brown for Overseeing Loss of Hundreds of Thousands of Manufacturing Jobs in Ohio

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno said Saturday that Ohio has forfeited 200,000 manufacturing jobs since his opponent, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), began serving in Congress.

“We’ve lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since Sherrod Brown’s been in Washington, DC,” Moreno told host Rob Astorino on Newsmax’s Saturday Agenda. “This is a guy who has never had a job in the private sector.”

Notably, Brown served seven terms as a U.S. representative, beginning in 1993, before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in the 2006 midterm election. Prior to that, he served in the Ohio State House from 1975-1982. Moreno emphasized that Brown’s political career dates back to the Nixon administration.

The political outsider, who established one of the largest auto dealership groups in the U.S., linked Ohio’s transition from a swing state to a red state in recent years to the state’s losses in manufacturing. When Astorino asked what he believed was driving the change among the Buckeye State electorate, Moreno said:

We used to be once a thriving manufacturing state. Cities like Dayton and Youngstown, and Lorraine, and Akron, Toledo, used to be these great manufacturing places where you could go to high school, graduate, go right into a job at one of these manufacturing facilities, have a great middle class life — that’s been stripped away from us.

The GOP candidate added, “We’ve shipped our jobs overseas to China and Mexico” to the detriment of Ohio’s middle class.

“[Ohioans] want leaders that put the interests of America First, that think about Americans before all else, and Sherrod Brown, he’s all in for the climate cultists who want to shut down coal mines and have everybody driving electric cars and the government spending that puts everybody in dependency,” Moreno said.

WATCH — U.S. Senate Candidate Bernie Moreno Takes on GOP Establishment: “They Know I Can’t Be Bought”:

Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News

Notably, Ohio has trended more and more conservative since former President Donald Trump’s eight-point victory in the 2016 presidential election. Trump followed that up with another eight-point victory in the 2020 election.

In Ohio’s most recent major elections during the 2022 midterms, voters elected Republicans in all statewide races by strong margins. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) won the Senate race by more than six percent, while Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH), Attorney General Dave Yost (R), and Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) each won reelection by at least 20 points. The GOP also won the races for auditor and treasurer by 17 points.

The contours of the race and the years-long trend in Ohio make Brown one of the most vulnerable senators in the country this election cycle.

“We’re running an extremely disciplined campaign, we got great grassroots support, and most importantly, President Trump will be at the top of the ticket, and we’re going to have the proper resources to expose Sherrod Brown’s voting record,” Moreno told Astorino while detailing his path to victory.