Exclusive–Bernie Moreno: Sherrod Brown ‘Is the Grim Reaper of Manufacturing in Ohio’

Ohio Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily on Tuesday that his opponent, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), “is the grim reaper of manufacturing in Ohio.”

Moreno joined the program while driving across the Buckeye State with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). He blasted Brown for overseeing the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs during his decades of working in government at both the state and federal levels.

“Well, you gotta remember, in my case, Sherrod Brown ran for office for the first time when Richard Nixon was in the White House,” Moreno told Breitbart News Daily host Mike Slater. “This guy’s been there a long time: 30 years in D.C., 20 years in state government.”

“He’s the Grim Reaper of manufacturing in Ohio. We’ve lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs while he’s been in D.C. He’s been in lockstep with the radical left,” he added. “This is a guy who wanted to be Kamala Harris’s vice president in 2019. She campaigned with him here in Ohio in 2018. He lied about skipping the Democratic Convention, saying he often misses them when, in reality, he hasn’t missed one since 1994. And the reason he lies about those things is because the only tool they’ve got in their toolbox is to lie.”

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Slater asked Moreno for data and his perspective about where Ohio used to be in the manufacturing sector compared to where it is now, and Moreno shared an eye-popping statistic detailing Ohio’s dominance during the mid-20th century.

“I’ll give you a stat that will blow your mind. In 1949, six of the wealthiest fourteen cities in the United States of America were in Ohio,” he said, naming Toledo, Youngstown, and Dayton as several examples.

Indeed, a Bloomberg News report from August 2023 confirms that six of fourteen American cities with the highest median household incomes were in Ohio in 1949: Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Akron, Youngstown, and Columbus.

“This was a thriving manufacturing state for two reasons: Number one, we were Texas before Texas was Texas,” Moreno said. “We were an energy-dominant state. Remember, Standard Oil of Ohio started here. We have to bring that back.”

“We are sitting on enormous natural gas reserves. We should be an energy-dominant nation that allows us to bring manufacturing back,” he continued. “You’re not going to build a manufacturing facility because you have two windmills out front. We’re certainly not going to do it with solar panels where we have maybe 100 days of sunshine here in Ohio. So you need natural gas, you need coal, you need oil, you need nuclear.”

Moreno also emphasized the need for regulatory and tax policies that foster an atmosphere that invites businesses to the Buckeye State.

“Secondly, you need a regulatory and tax environment that encourages businesses to do business here in Ohio, as opposed to what Sherrod Brown does, which is — all he does is advocate for union bosses,” Moreno told Slater. “So, of course, they fund his campaign. He funds them. You have this cycle of corruption, and these companies leave. They go to places like Alabama. They go to places like Mississippi, Georgia.”

Moreno has a vision to “woo” business into Ohio.

“What we’ll do is we’re going to woo companies here to Ohio, make certain that they understand how easy it is to do business here,” he added. “We’re going to work well with the Republican legislature and the Republican governor to attract businesses. Sherrod Brown repels them.”

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.