Background and career
Bernardo Francisco Moreno Mejía ( mər-EE-noh; born February 14, 1967) is an American politician and businessman serving since 2025 as the senior United States senator from Ohio. He is a member of the Republican Party. Moreno was born in Colombia to a family that soon immigrated to the United States, where he grew up in Florida. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he entered business and moved to Ohio in 2005, where he operated car dealerships predominantly in Greater Cleveland before becoming involved in blockchain companies. Moreno first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022, but withdrew before the Republican primary. In 2024, he defeated Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, becoming Ohio's junior senator on January 3, 2025. A week later, he became the state's senior senator when JD Vance resigned to become vice president. Moreno is the first Hispanic American senator from Ohio and one of the first two Colombian American U.S. senators, alongside Ruben Gallego.
Bernardo Francisco Moreno Mejía was born in Bogotá, Colombia, on February 14, 1967. When Moreno was five, the family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was raised. His father, Bernardo Moreno Mejía Sr., was a physician and surgical assistant who held high-ranking positions in the Colombian government. His mother, Marta Mejía Pradilla, was a real estate agent. Moreno became a U.S. citizen at age 18 and renounced his Colombian citizenship. Moreno's family of nine lived in a three-bedroom condominium in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea for two months before moving to a four-bedroom house in Pompano Beach. Moreno attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration. After it was publicized that his Cleveland Foundation biography incorrectly included a Master of Business Administration degree, his Senate campaign blamed the error on "a staffer who made a mistake".
After college, Moreno worked at General Motors as an analyst and field consultant for the Saturn Corporation division. He moved to Massachusetts in the early 1990s to become the general manager of the Saturn dealership at The Herb Chambers Companies. Moreno relocated to Ohio in 2005 and bought a Mercedes-Benz dealership in North Olmsted, Ohio, near Cleveland. Moreno was the president of the Collection Auto Group, a car dealership company. By 2016, he owned more than a dozen dealerships, mostly located in Ohio. In 2019, he began to sell a number of his dealerships to focus on his new blockchain-based technology company, Ownum. In 2018, Moreno established the Sales Center for Excellence at Cleveland State University. In 2019, Moreno was elected to the Cleveland Business Hall of Fame in Cleveland Magazine. Moreno was appointed to the board of trustees for the MetroHealth System in October 2019 and served until he resigned in February 2021 to focus on seeking public office. In 2023, Moreno settled over a dozen wage theft lawsuits before launching his U.S. Senate campaign, agreeing to pay over $400,000 to two former employees. A state judge rebuked him for shredding documents potentially related to the case. A March 2024 report found that Moreno had faced two lawsuits alleging gender and age-based discrimination; Moreno's campaign responded by saying both employees who sued him supported his Senate campaign.
In April 2021, Moreno entered the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate to replace the retiring incumbent Rob Portman. On February 3, 2022, Moreno dropped out of the race, reportedly after meeting with Donald Trump.
On April 10, 2023, Moreno filed paperwork to run for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat in the 2024 election. Donald Trump endorsed Moreno in December 2023. Moreno won the Republican primary on March 19, 2024, defeating Matt Dolan and Frank LaRose. Moreno defeated incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown in the general election. During the general election campaign, the crypto industry spent more than $40 million in support of Moreno's campaign. Brown was considered adversarial to the crypto industry. In the run-up to the Republican Senate primary in March 2024, the Associated Press reported that an account on Adult FriendFinder had been created in 2008 using Moreno's email address. The account solicited "men for 1-on-1 sex". The profile listed Moreno's date of birth, and geolocation data indicated that it was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale where property records show Moreno's parents owned a home at the time. In a statement Moreno's lawyer provided to the Associated Press, a former intern said he created the account and called it an "aborted prank".
Moreno was sworn in on January 3, 2025, as a junior U.S. senator in the 119th United States Congress. When JD Vance resigned from the Senate on January 10 to prepare to take office as vice president of the United States on January 20, Moreno became Ohio's senior U.S. senator. In April, Moreno negotiated a year-long delay in the closure of the Chillicothe Paper Mill with H.I.G. Capital.
