Senate candidate Bernie Moreno campaigns as an outsider. His wealthy family is politically connected

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Bernie Moreno was ready with a quip when a radio host in his native Colombia asked why he would want to trade his successful professional and personal life in Ohio for the toils of the U.S. Senate.

“Remember that my brother, Luis Alberto, just got out of politics — and there always needs to be a Moreno in politics,” he replied in Spanish during the 2021 interview. “Otherwise, what happens in the world, right?”

The lighthearted response from Moreno, the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, hints at his family’s deep political connections in both the U.S. and Colombia. Moreno’s father was a high government official in Colombia, while among his six siblings are a powerful former political adviser and diplomat and an important Colombian businessman.

Those ties, combined with his family’s considerable wealth in their home country, are the backdrop to Moreno’s journey from purchasing a single Cleveland car dealership to millionaire to becoming Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s pick in the pivotal state.

“He comes from one of Colombia’s well-off families, whose wealth goes back generations and whose members recycle through senior government jobs,” said Philip Chicola, a retired U.S. diplomat who once worked closely with Moreno’s older brother, Luis Alberto Moreno.

Moreno has pitched himself as a political outsider and immigrant whose family built its way out of rudimentary beginnings in the U.S. thanks to the American dream. In a statement, he pushed back against questions about his portrayal of his origin story and his parents’ sacrifices as “disgraceful.” He also sees it as disingenuous, describing his Democratic rival, third-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, as someone who “grew up with a silver spoon,” a reference to the incumbent’s status as the Yale-educated son and grandson of doctors. The Brown campaign declined comment.

Vicky Stockamore, Moreno’s older sister, said in a statement provided by Moreno’s campaign that she remembers her family’s trajectory exactly as her brother describes it.

“It took great sacrifice for my parents to leave behind their home country and risk a new, unknown life in a foreign place,” she said. “My parents firmly believed that if you work hard, you’ll be successful, and that’s what the American Dream means to me.”

Wealth and political connections are nothing new in the Senate, whose members include 15 former governors, one former presidential nominee and at least 10 people who are worth more than $30 million.

Moreno built his fortune as a luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur. If elected, he would be among the top eight wealthiest U.S. senators, based on the most recent data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, with an estimated net worth between $25.5 million and $105.7 million.

Brown has a high-end net worth of about $1 million, according to his 2022 Senate financial disclosure, the most recent available.

Moreno’s business background and wealth helped him win over Trump during a contentious GOP primary this spring that included questions about a profile created with Moreno’s email account on an adult website – a profile Moreno’s lawyer said was created by a former intern as a prank. Moreno retained support from Trump during the controversy and was given a coveted speaking spot at the Republican National Convention earlier this month.

The Morenos started their family in the U.S., where Bernardo Sr. did his surgical residency at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Their first three children were born in Philadelphia but raised in Bogota, where Bernardo was a medical school dean, a leading advocate for Colombia’s surgeons and then the equivalent of Colombian secretary of health.

Bernie, or Bernardo Jr., the youngest of seven children, was about five when the family moved to Florida. Before entering politics, Bernie Moreno described his mother as coming from “outsized privilege” and says she emigrated because she didn’t want her children to be raised in ”an entitled way.” Bernie Moreno became a U.S. citizen at 18.

“Our family came to the United States because our mother wanted her children to grow up here,” Stockamore said. “It would’ve been easier for us to stay in Colombia, which is why, at first, my father wanted to stay, but my mother was insistent. She knew that growing up in the United States would teach my siblings and I the value of hard work.”

After attending American universities, Luis Alberto Moreno, their eldest child, returned to Colombia and served in several cabinet positions. As conservative President Andres Pastrana’s ambassador to the U.S. starting in 1998, he helped win passage in Congress of what remains the largest ever U.S. aid package to Latin America. Among his legislative partners: then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, a sponsor of the $1.6 billion counternarcotics strategy known as Plan Colombia.

Another Moreno brother, Roberto, is co-founder and president of Amarilo Construction, one of Colombia’s largest builders of affordable housing. Before getting entangled in a corruption scandal and returning to the United States, Moreno’s cousin Luis Andrade led Colombia’s national infrastructure agency.

Julie Carr Smyth And Joshua Goodman, The Associated Press