Exclusive — Sen. Marco Rubio Endorses Pro-Trump Businessman Bernie Moreno for Senate in Ohio

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is formally endorsing pro-Donald Trump businessman Bernie Moreno for U.S. Senate in Ohio, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

“The U.S. Senate needs more conservative leaders like Bernie Moreno,” Rubio said in a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release. “He’s fought through government red tape to build and run successful businesses. He’s created jobs, raised a family, and given back to his community. Bernie is a proven leader who knows how to get things done. With Bernie in the U.S. Senate, Ohioans will know that they have someone beholden only to them and that he will fight every day for their families, their communities, and their values.”

Moreno thanked Rubio for the endorsement in response. “I am honored to have the endorsement of Senator Marco Rubio,” Moreno said. “Senator Rubio sees clearly what people across Ohio are seeing — ours is the only campaign with the momentum and the vision to restore Ohio’s voice in the U.S. Senate. For too long, Sherrod Brown has talked a big game, and only delivered for D.C. special interests. I look forward to working with Senator Rubio, Senator Vance and other conservatives in the U.S. Senate who will fight for working families.”

Rubio’s endorsement of Moreno comes after Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has already backed the business leader in the multi-way Senate primary, and as former President Donald Trump has spoken very highly of Moreno on a number of occasions including most recently at the Turning Point conference in West Palm Beach a few weeks ago.

While Trump has yet to formally endorse in the race, things seem to be pointing that way for Moreno as the other two candidates in the race — Secretary of State Frank LaRose and State Sen. Matt Dolan — have been vehemently anti-Trump on a number of occasions. LaRose, for instance, was caught on an audio recording unearthed this year attacking the significance of a Trump endorsement — and he even accepted cash from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for election operations. Dolan, meanwhile, has spent years urging Ohioans to move on from Trump and ditch the former president even though Trump remains incredibly popular in Ohio.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio and chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20, 2022. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The winner of the GOP primary next year will face off against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in November’s general election in Ohio in what is shaping up to be — alongside Senate races in West Virginia and Montana where Democrats are also defending seats in deep red states — one of the biggest Senate races of the year. These three races, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) has told Breitbart News, will determine which party controls the majority in the U.S. Senate in 2025 and far beyond that as well. Daines has, like Moreno, endorsed Trump for president in 2024 in the Republican primary.

Rubio, who has long played an active role in primaries for open races for the Senate, has alongside people like Vance — Ohio’s other senator, a freshman who won in last year’s midterm elections in large part thanks to Trump’s endorsement — been promoting a populist nationalist agenda in the Senate. His work on issues facing American workers and families — ranging from combatting the rise of the Chinese Communist Party to fighting globalization to bringing better benefits and wages to working and middle-class Americans — has charted a path forward for the GOP beyond the old-guard establishment days. Rubio has discussed this in several interviews with Breitbart News, including one this summer in which he ripped globalization worldwide and defended nationalists.

Bernie Moreno is acknowledged at a rally with former President Donald Trump at the Delaware County Fairgrounds, on April 23, 2022, in Delaware, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joe Maiorana, File)

“So, now you have leaders that are not socialists and are rising up to this and saying we got to have our economic policies reflect the national interest,” Rubio told Breitbart News. “Nationhood matters. Place matters. It always has mattered. It has always mattered to the Chinese. It obviously matters to the Russians. And it should matter to Italians, and it should matter to Americans, and it should matter to everyone. We are not, at the end of the day, citizens of the world or consumers of a global market — we are first and foremost from the place we live in: community, city, country. You have that reflected in Italian politics now, as you did to some extent with Boris Johnson in the U.K. and certainly in the United States with Donald Trump and the change you see inside the Republican Party becoming a working-class party. So I think that’s just reflective of an important correction that needs to happen, not just in the U.S., but in the industrialized world in the 21st century. This 20 or 30-year experiment with global citizenry has not worked, and in fact, it has only worked to the benefit of places like China that never bought into it in the first place. They took the benefits of it, but they didn’t give up their national interest.”

Harnessing the energy behind such a message — that the failures of globalization have wrought havoc upon America’s working and middle classes — is extremely powerful in a state like Ohio. So, seeing Rubio — who is emerging as one of the nation’s leading lawmakers driving this intellectual discussion forward — aligning with the businessman likely to win Trump’s support in the race for the Senate is particularly promising for Republicans heading into next year. That’s especially true in this race, too, since Ohio’s incumbent — the Democrat Brown — regularly, despite serious corruption concerns surrounding him and blatant contradictions when even just slightly perusing his record, nonetheless still falsely presents himself as a champion of working-class Ohioans in his decades-long efforts to remain in elected office. Whether that charade succeeds again or not could depend on if the Republicans can field a candidate like Moreno who can harness Trump’s energy to defeat the fake leftist populist mirage.