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

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Bernie Moreno had a joke ready when a radio host in his native Colombia asked him why he would trade his successful professional and personal life in Ohio for the U.S. Senate race.

“Remember that my brother, Luis Alberto, just left politics — and there must always be a Moreno in politics,” he responded in Spanish during the 2021 interview. “Otherwise, what happens in the world, right?”

The breezy response from Moreno, the Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, hints at his family’s deep political connections in both the United States and Colombia. Those ties, combined with his family’s considerable wealth back home, provide the backdrop for Moreno’s journey from owning a single car dealership in Cleveland to becoming Donald Trump’s pick in the crucial state.

“He comes from one of Colombia’s prosperous families, whose wealth goes back generations and whose members rise through high government positions,” said Philip Chicola, a retired U.S. diplomat who once worked closely with Moreno’s older brother.

Moreno has presented himself as a political outsider and immigrant whose family worked their way out of the American dream’s rudimentary early years. In a statement, he pushed back against questions about his portrayal of his origin story and his parents’ sacrifices as “disgraceful.” He also criticized his Democratic rival, third-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, as someone who “grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth,” a reference to the incumbent senator’s status as the Yale-educated son and grandson of doctors.

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

“It took a lot of sacrifice for my parents to leave their home country and risk a new, unknown life in a strange place,” she said. “My parents were big believers that if you work hard, you will succeed, and that’s what the American Dream means to me.”

Wealth and connections in the Senate

Wealth and political connections are nothing new in the Senate. The Senate is made up of 15 former governors, one former presidential candidate and at least 10 people worth more than $30 million.

Moreno built his fortune as a luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur. If elected, he would become the eighth-richest senator, based on the most recent data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, with an estimated net worth of as much as $101 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 Senate primary that included questions about a profile created on an adult website using Moreno’s email account — a profile Moreno’s lawyer said was created as a prank by a former intern. Moreno retained Trump’s support and landed a coveted speaking slot at the Republican National Convention this month.

Moreno’s parents began their family in the United States, where Bernardo Sr. received his surgical training at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Their first three children were born in Philadelphia but grew up in Bogota, Colombia, where Bernardo was dean of a medical school, a leading advocate for Colombian surgeons, and then a government leader.

Bernie, or Bernardo Jr., the youngest of seven children, was about 5 years old when his family moved to Florida. Before entering politics, Bernie Moreno described his mother as coming from “extraordinarily privileged” areas and says she emigrated because she didn’t want her children to be raised in a “privileged way.” Bernie Moreno became a U.S. citizen at age 18.

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

After attending U.S. universities, their eldest child, Luis Alberto Moreno, served in several cabinet positions in Colombia. As ambassador to the U.S. for conservative President Andres Pastrana from 1998, he was the driving force behind the passage in Congress of what remains the largest U.S. aid package ever for Latin America. Among his legislative partners: then-Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, a sponsor of the $1.6 billion drug-control strategy known as Plan Colombia.

“He was one of the most effective ambassadors in Washington at the time,” said Chicola, the retired U.S. diplomat who worked closely with Luis Alberto Moreno to secure congressional support for the aid. “He was very affable. Democrats and Republicans loved him.”

Chicola, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as a teenager and led the State Department’s Colombia policy in the late 1990s, said Moreno never mentioned his brother Bernie, who is more than a decade younger, during their almost monthly breakfasts and other frequent gatherings. But he called Bernie Moreno’s immigrant story a “gross exaggeration.”

Arrival in the United States

Stockamore said life wasn’t easy when the Morenos first arrived in the U.S. She remembers the kids going to the local flea market to sell trinkets to help make extra money for the family, and she had to pay for her own community college education.

Many of Luis Alberto Moreno’s business connections stem from his time as president of the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank, the largest source of long-term financing in Latin America and the Caribbean. During his tenure from 2005 to 2020, he oversaw the largest capital increase in the international bank’s history. But he also drew criticism from U.S. lawmakers for how the bank, whose mission is to fight poverty in the region, lost nearly $1 billion by investing much of its cash reserves in mortgage-backed securities at a time when Wall Street was fleeing toxic assets blamed for causing the 2008 global financial crisis.

Another brother, Roberto Moreno, is co-founder and president of Amarilo Construction, one of Colombia’s largest affordable-housing builders. Moreno’s campaign said the brothers maintained clear legal and operational firewalls while Luis Alberto Moreno was in charge of the IDB to avoid potential conflicts. But corporate records show that at least some of the IDB’s financing went to banks that worked with Amarilo, and Bernie Moreno’s financial disclosures indicate he is heavily invested in a U.S. subsidiary of the company.

The IDB has lent or underwritten bonds worth a total of $360 million to two private Colombian banks to promote affordable housing through its private lending arm. One of the banks, Banco Davivienda, financed Amarilo’s development of an apartment complex in Bogota between 2019 and 2020, according to the mortgage lender’s 2021 annual report. Meanwhile, the other financial institution, Bancolombia, in 2020 signed an alliance with Amarilo and Yellowstone Capital Partners, a private equity firm the construction giant founded in 2009 to raise institutional investment. It has operations in both Colombia and the U.S.

According to Bernie Moreno’s 2023 personal financial disclosure, he is the majority owner of a Yellowstone-related tract of land in Costa Rica worth between $1 million and $5 million. He also has between $750,000 and $1.5 million invested in two of Yellowstone’s U.S. mutual funds, one of which focuses on U.S. housing opportunities.

Luis Alberto Moreno’s more recent activities include serving on the boards of The Dow Chemical Company, a major Brazilian bank and Mexico’s largest Coca-Cola bottler. He is also a managing director of Allen & Co., a New York-based investment bank that hosts a dealmaking retreat for billionaires each summer in Sun Valley, Idaho, and has closed deals for companies ranging from Chewy.com and the New York Mets to Walmart and Facebook. The elder Moreno is also a member of the International Olympic Committee and sits on the Leadership Council of the World Economic Forum.

Siblings and spouses

Bernie Moreno’s siblings and their spouses have donated more than $134,000 to Bernie Moreno’s two Senate races since 2021, campaign finance records show. About half of that was returned after Moreno withdrew from the 2021 race.

Moreno’s campaign also received $2,900 in 2021 from Luis Andrade, his cousin. Andrade, a U.S. citizen, helped run the consulting giant McKinsey & Company in Latin America for 25 years before leaving the private sector in 2011 to head a Colombian government agency charged with attracting private infrastructure investment.

One of the biggest investors in the highway improvements he promoted was Brazil’s Odebrecht. In 2016, the Brazilian government pleaded guilty in the U.S. to paying $788 million in bribes to officials in Latin America, including Colombia.

Although Andrade himself has never been charged with accepting bribes, he has been accused of improper conduct in awarding a renewal of a concession contract managed by Odebrecht and a Colombian partner, Grupo AVAL. Last year, he was banned from holding office for 15 years as a result of an administrative disciplinary procedure, which is now being appealed. He also faces criminal charges.

Andrade maintains his innocence and has helped U.S. authorities unravel Odebrecht’s web of corruption in Colombia. One of his supporters in Washington is former Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla. He has accused Colombia’s former attorney general, who previously served as counsel to Odebrecht’s Colombian partner, of retaliation after he, as director of the infrastructure agency, tried to cancel Odebrecht’s contract without compensation for about $300 million in cost-overrun claims after the scandal broke.

Moreno’s daughter, Emily, is the wife of Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a former White House and Trump campaign aide and sometime spokesperson for the Moreno family.

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Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Washington and Astrid Suarez in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.