Frank LaRose Campaign: Ohio Voters Don’t Trust Bernie Moreno

A senior campaign advisor for the Frank LaRose for Senate campaign told The Ohio Star this week that Buckeye State voters “don’t really trust Bernie Moreno.”

“They just don’t trust him. Something feels odd to them; something feels weird. Bernie can’t seem to close the deal,” the LaRose campaign advisor said.

Right now in Ohio, LaRose (pictured above, right) and Moreno (pictured above, left) are competing against each other in the state GOP primary. LaRose, who is Ohio’s secretary of state, and Moreno, who is a business owner, are considered the two front runners to take on incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in November.

State Representative Matt Dolan (R-Chargin Falls) is also running for the Ohio Senate GOP primary but sits in third place.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the average polling of this race as of March 2 shows Moreno at 26.4 percent, LaRose at 21.4 percent, and Dolan at 17.2 percent.

A new poll that came out on February 29 conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, which was sponsored by Moreno’s campaign, shows Moreno with a double-digit lead.

Moreno sits at 31 percent, LaRose at 21 percent, and Dolan at 19 percent.

Before this Moreno-sponsored poll came out, FiveThirtyEight on February 28 had LaRose ahead of Moreno by less than a point. LaRose was at 20.8 percent, and Moreno was at 19.9 percent. Dolan came in third at 15.5 percent.

Voting is currently ongoing and will continue until March 19.

But despite recent polling showing Moreno ahead in the race, the LaRose campaign has noticed that there is a “high number” of undecided voters still left.

“By all outside metrics, Bernie should be running away with this thing. So the question is, why isn’t he? And from all the data we see, it’s that people are not sold on him,” the senior campaign advisor said.

The LaRose campaign estimates that the undecided primary voters range from 30 to 40 percent.

According to the LaRose campaign advisor, anywhere between 750,000 to 900,000 people would be considered a low-voter turnout. The campaign advisor said high turnout would be between 1.2 million and 1.3 million voters.

LaRose’s campaign sees this primary trending towards a lower voter turnout. If the Ohio GOP Senate primary goes toward a low voter turnout, the campaign advisor said “that’s very good for Frank.”

Voter turnout for the 2022 Ohio U.S. Senate GOP primary, for example, totaled 1,069,826, according to data compiled by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office.

Rick Gorka, a communications advisor for the LaRose campaign, told The Star that the people voting in this low-turnout primary are “engaged voters” who pay close attention to things like the Second Amendment and life issues.

“I think those voters are very comfortable with Frank. They trust Frank on life [and] on guns,” the senior advisor said.

LaRose has previously called out Moreno for his approval of 22 separate grants totaling $2.08 million to abortion advocates, including Planned Parenthood, while he served as a Cleveland Foundation board member beginning back in 2014.

Moreno’s stance on the Second Amendment has come under fire after an unearthed video from 2019 shows him questioning whether or not an individual “needs” to have a gun compatible with magazines that “hold 100 bullets at one time.”

The advisor added that when political races get a “larger turnout audience,” that’s when they see voters who “maybe are less engaged in the political process.”

Based on the campaign’s models, the senior campaign advisor said that “a much higher percentage of people” are voting for LaRose.

“Assuming there’s 800,000 people that vote in this primary, which is what the trajectory is on right now, I only need, in totality, 266,000 people to vote for Frank, and we win this thing,” the senior campaign advisor added.

“It really shows me, quite frankly, with all of the support Bernie’s had, whether it be pay voter contact, TV, the Trump endorsement, obviously endorsements from high profile conservative leaders in the party, both in state and national, who I think just, for whatever reason, kind of got on the Bernie train early,” the campaign advisor said. “It just doesn’t seem to be closing the deal with Ohio voters.”

In addition to former President Donald Trump’s support, Moreno received the endorsements of 13 Republican U.S. senators.

In terms of spending, a pro-LaRose super PAC called Leadership for Ohio Fund has spent more than $3 million on television ads while Moreno has spent approximately $3 million in television and digital ads.

The LaRose campaign advisor said that when people don’t vote, they tend not to be excited about their choices.

“I think there’s some confusion right now because I think they want to be with Frank. But obviously, President Trump has huge support in the state. And so they’re just a little confused as to like, hold on a second, the president’s kind of saying Bernie, but I don’t really want to go with Bernie,” the campaign advisor said.

Also, the LaRose advisor added that if voters who “are unequivocally supportive of the president” had made up their minds and went with what Trump “told them to do,” voter turnout would be “much higher at this point in the race.”

Prior to Trump’s endorsement of Moreno on December 19, 2023, the businessman had consistently polled below LaRose, and sometimes Dolan, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling tracker. Since the former president’s endorsement, Moreno has polled above LaRose in three straight polls.

In the 2022 Ohio U.S. Senate race between Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan, Vance saw his first-ever lead over Ryan in the polling shortly after he received Trump’s endorsement.

Gorka said that Trump’s endorsement does matter, but it is still up to the candidates to “make the convincing case to voters as to why they should vote for that individual.”

“Bernie spent nearly $ 2 million at the end of Q4 last year, essentially telling Ohio voters he was already endorsed by President Trump,” Gorka said. “And I think that he front-loaded the impact of that endorsement, and now, over the rest of this campaign, voters are learning more about who he really is and what he has said and done, which is why he hasn’t closed the deal.

Gorka added that “sometimes the good guys get it wrong.”

“We have said consistently. Frank, when he wins the primary and becomes the next [senator] and retires Sherrod Brown, which is really what this is about,” he said. “Who’s going to beat Sherrod Brown?”

In terms of head-to-head matchups, every poll released since October 2023 has shown Brown tying or leading with his Republican challenger, whether it be LaRose, Moreno, or Dolan.

Gorka said LaRose will work with Trump when he beats President Joe Biden in the presidential election in November. He called LaRose and Trump a “good partnership.”

“One of the interesting things here will be when a candidate like Bernie, who’s got everything going for him, including spending, having the president’s support, all the things, can’t close the deal like this on a primary; it just makes you wonder if people are going to turn out for him and vote down ballot in [the] general [election],” the senior campaign advisor said.

“It gives you some pause,” the senior campaign advisor added.

The LaRose advisor also said the Moreno’s campaign felt “very top down.”

The advisor said that LaRose has visited 22 counties and done over 30 events in the last two weeks. LaRose’s campaign advisor also noted that Moreno had been in Washington D.C., New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, last week.

“He’s not talking to Ohio voters; he’s going in and trying to hang out with the rich and famous, but it’s unclear to me what his campaign strategy is there,” the advisor said.

To illustrate this, the campaign advisor gave an example of the Brown County Lincoln Day Dinner, which occurred at the end of February. The advisor said that the county’s GOP endorsed him, but Moreno could not make it because he was in D.C.

The LaRose advisor said that he sent someone from his campaign with a “letter apologizing” for having to be in D.C.

At the event, no one sat at the Moreno table, the advisor said.

“This is the guy that you apparently endorsed that you believe could be the next senator from Ohio,” the advisor added.

“It just speaks, I think, to what I believe is the ‘House of Cards’ campaign that Bernie is running, which is, ‘I’m going to get all the big names to endorse me, and then I’m going to spend all my time with coastal elites outside the state,’” the advisor said.

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Zach Schmidt is the Senior Digital Editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected]. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2. Kaitlin Housler contributed to this article.
Photo “Frank LaRose” by John T. Coats II. Photo “Bernie Moreno” by Bernie Moreno. Background Photo “People Voting” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.