J.D. Vance endorses Ohio Senate candidate who called for reparations for white people

Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance endorsed millionaire businessman Bernie Moreno on Monday in his quest to win Ohio’s other Senate seat in 2024. Moreno made national news in April for comments suggesting that white descendants of Civil War soldiers are due reparations.

In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Vance backed Moreno’s candidacy in the race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. He said he was excited about the prospect of having Moreno as a Senate colleague.

“Bernie is a lifelong businessman, who has created thousands of good-paying middle-class jobs and is a strong America First conservative, who will never stop fighting to protect Ohio workers and families,” Vance said. “Bernie is committed to securing our southern border, getting tough on China and taking the fight to the woke corporations waging war against our conservative values.”

Moreno, a Colombian-born immigrant who became wealthy through owning automobile dealerships and a title company, poured millions of dollars into a 2022 primary for an open Senate seat against Vance and other Republicans. He dropped out that February after former President Donald Trump encouraged him to do so. After vowing never to run for office again, he announced on April 18 that he would challenge Brown as a pro-Trump candidate.

Moreno’s campaign website lists 15 priorities including “Secure America’s borders, stop amnesty and destroy the Mexican Drug Cartels,” “End Wokeness and Cancel Culture,” and “End Socialism in America.”

At an April campaign event, he told supporters that white people died to free Black people in the Civil War: “You know, they talk about reparations. Where are the reparations for the people in the North who died to save the lives of Black people? And I know it’s not politically correct to say that, but you know what, we’ve gotta stop being politically correct. We gotta call it what it is.”

“We are appalled, but not surprised, to see reasserted white supremacist ideals continued by the propaganda campaign that made the Confederacy infamous,” Tafeni English-Relf, director of the Alabama state office for the Southern Poverty Law Center, responded in an April 26 statement. “Until Black descendants receive reparations for the generational and retraumatizing aftereffects of slavery — the vilest chapter in American history — reparations for white descendants should not even be up for discussion. The mere suggestion is either uninformed, grounded in privilege, or willfully ignorant.”

Before his 2022 Senate run, Vance was an outspoken critic of Trump and talked about the reality of white privilege in the United States. But as a candidate, he flip-flopped on both.

In a June 2021 op-ed for the far-right Claremont Institute, titled “Fighting Woke Capital,” Vance wrote: “Woke capital is when companies and businesses are more invested in a movement like BLM than they are in traditional American principles, and they are. And if you peel back the onion, what you find is that the businesses that are most connected and most devoted to destroying our values are also benefitting financially from it.”

In March 2022, Vance told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson illegal immigration is fueled by “Democrat politicians who have decided that they can’t win re-election in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here. That’s what this is about. We have an invasion because very powerful people get richer and powerful because of it.” In an October 2022 debate, he falsely accused his opponent of slander for noting that this constituted spreading a racist “great replacement theory.”

Vance also ran ads in April 2022 defending himself and his supporters by arguing that xenophobic positions were not racism: “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump’s wall. They censor us but it doesn’t change the truth. Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Moreno is one of multiple Republicans running for the 2024 Senate nomination. Millionaire state Sen. Matt Dolan has announced his candidacy and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, an election denier, reportedly told donors this month that he plans to run as well.

The Cook Political Report currently rates the general election race a toss-up.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.