COLUMBUS, Ohio — Tucked away in the Devon Triangle neighborhood of this Franklin County city, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, made her way down the church basement stairs of the Destiny Center to make the case that businessman Bernie Moreno was the best Republican candidate to take on Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) this November.
Noem said she was there not just to send a message to the Democratic Party but her own party as well. “The same old guys aren’t going to get reelected this year, and we are going to send a new candidate to beat Sherrod Brown and work with Donald Trump to make America great again.”
Noem admitted that while she’d prefer to be home hugging her grandbabies, she said this election was important enough for her to spend a couple of days traveling across Ohio to stump for Moreno.
“Make sure you do your part. When you leave this place, I need you to go start talking to people about supporting Bernie,” Noem said to a diverse crowd located in the majority-minority neighborhood filled with tidy, moderate homes lining several blocks sprinkled with local small businesses.
Moreno, who was born in Bogota, Columbia, and moved to the United States with his family when he was 5, is running in a three-way race against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan.
Brown has held office in this state nearly continually since 1974 when he won a state Senate race. He has held his U.S. Senate seat since the 2006 midterm “shellacking” the Democrats handed the Republicans and has won every six years since then, usually against weak Republican contenders.
Politically, Ohio has changed dramatically since electing Barack Obama twice in both 2008 and 2012. This cycle marks the most difficult environment Brown has ever faced and the first cycle he has been considered vulnerable by both Republicans and Democrats.
While Democrats took a victory lap last November when Ohioans voted to enshrine a right to an abortion in their state’s constitution, the latest Emerson poll shows Trump up over Biden by 10 percentage points.
The winner of the primary race here in Ohio will be part of just one race in which a vulnerable Democratic incumbent facing serious opposition will determine who controls the Senate in January 2025. West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania are the others.
Noem isn’t the only elected official from the populist side of the GOP to stump for Moreno this week. Former President Donald Trump will hold a rally for the Cleveland businessman at the Dayton International Airport on Saturday afternoon. Trump endorsed Moreno late last year.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) will close out the final three days ahead of the March 19 primary traveling with Moreno across the state from Milford to Parma to help take him over the finish line in the race.
Moreno’s rivals earned the support of the more establishment side of the party, with both Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman endorsing Dolan.
Noem, who is part of the original populist movement that began ahead of the 2016 presidential election, is wildly popular with the conservative base, so much so that last month, in a straw poll of attendees from the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, she and former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy tied for Trump’s preferred running mate.
Both she and Moreno sat for an interview with the Washington Examiner after the rally to discuss his race, the impact an endorsement can have, and how many times a day Noem is asked if she is going to be Trump’s running mate.
“I get asked a lot,” she said laughing. “I just have told him I don’t have to be his vice president. I need him to win. So, I will do everything I can to make sure that he wins.”
The second-term governor said she came to help Moreno, first because she knows and likes him, second because she believes he is the only of the three primary candidates who could beat Brown in November.
“I first met him years ago in Iowa, and I saw this guy that had started a business that was successful, that was driving campaign staffers around and doing things that normal CEOs don’t do, just being humble enough to do whatever he could to help conservative candidates win,” she explained.
Noem said that as she got to know him better, she respected how much he and his family had each other’s back. “You can learn a lot about a person by looking at their family and what they do and how they support each other. So, when he got into this Senate race, I just thought, ‘I’ll do everything I can to help him,’” she said.
Noem said she did meet with all three candidates before making her assessment. “I knew that Bernie was the one who actually was telling me the truth on all of his positions, and I could go back and prove that he believed what he was saying,” she said, adding that quality was different with the other two candidates.
“I’m not here to kick them in the teeth, but I have recognized, after running for governor — my first race for governor was against a guy that supported Bernie Sanders, and I barely beat him. Well, it made a world of difference when Donald Trump came in and passionately campaigned for people and told people that he supported Kristi Noem,” she said.
“I know the power of an endorsement for people that maybe aren’t familiar with Bernie as I am, but if they believe in what I did in South Dakota and I say that this man can do that kind of leadership here for Ohio, then that might matter to somebody,” she said.
Both share a profound belief that what is happening on the border was an invasion of the country, that the proposed border protection bill was weak, and that the steps needed to be taken were being handled by Trump when he was in the White House.
Moreno said that illegal crossings need to end now and that he would support that if he won in November. “We are being invaded. We have to recognize that. The asylum law is very simple. If you cross into the country illegally, you’re not detained, you’re not arrested, certainly not rewarded. You’re returned. Immediately,” he said.
Moreno said that if we do these six things, we’d have a safe and secure border: “Finish the wall, then declare the drug cartels terrorist organizations, go after American citizens that are helping the drug cartels launder money, work with Mexico to get rid of the drug cartels, wipe them off the face of the Earth, and deport anybody who’s here illegally,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A SurveyUSA poll released this week shows Moreno in the lead earning 29% support, followed by Dolan at 27%, LaRose at 21%, and a whopping 23% of the voters undecided, with a margin of error of 4.3%.
State Sen. Michele Reyonlds, the first black woman elected as a Republican in Franklin County, said she is confident the visit by Noem here — the event was packed with a holdover room packed as well — along with visits by Vance and Trump would help make the argument to voters Moreno would be the best candidate.