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

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Bernie Moreno was ready with a quip when a radio host in his native Colombia asked why he would want to trade his successful professional and personal life in Ohio for the toils of the U.S. Senate.

“Remember that my brother, Luis Alberto, just got out of politics — and there always needs to be a Moreno in politics,” he replied in Spanish during the 2021 interview. “Otherwise, what happens in the world, right?”

The lighthearted response from Moreno, the Republican nominee 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 in their home country, are the backdrop to Moreno’s journey from owning a single Cleveland car dealership to becoming Donald Trump’s pick in the pivotal state.

“He comes from one of Colombia’s well-off families, whose wealth goes back generations and whose members recycle through senior government jobs,” said Philip Chicola, a retired U.S. diplomat who once worked closely with Moreno’s older brother.

Moreno has pitched himself as a political outsider and immigrant whose family built its way out of rudimentary beginnings in the U.S. thanks to the American dream. 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,” a reference to the incumbent’s status as the Yale-educated son and grandson of doctors.

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

“It took great sacrifice for my parents to leave behind their home country and risk a new, unknown life in a foreign place,” she said. “My parents firmly believed that if you work hard, you’ll be successful, 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, whose members include 15 former governors, one former presidential nominee and at least 10 people who are worth more than $30 million.

Moreno built his fortune as a luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur. If elected, he would be among the top eight wealthiest senators, based on the most recent data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, with an estimated net worth between $25.5 million and $105.7 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 with Moreno’s email account on an adult website –- a profile that Moreno’s lawyer said was created by a former intern as a prank. Moreno retained support from Trump and was given a coveted speaking spot at the Republican National Convention this month.

Moreno’s parents started their family in the U.S., where Bernardo Sr. did his surgical residency at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Their first three children were born in Philadelphia but raised in Bogota, Colombia, where Bernardo was a medical school dean, a leading advocate for Colombia’s surgeons and then a government leader.

Bernie, or Bernardo Jr., the youngest of seven children, was about age 5 when the family moved to Florida. Before he entered politics, Bernie Moreno described his mother as coming from “outsized privilege” and says she emigrated because she did not want her children to be raised in ”an entitled way.” Bernie Moreno became a U.S. citizen at 18.

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

After attending American universities, their eldest child, Luis Alberto Moreno, served in several cabinet positions in Colombia. As conservative President Andres Pastrana’s ambassador to the U.S. starting in 1998, he spearheaded passage in Congress of what remains the largest ever U.S. aid package to Latin America. Among his legislative partners: then-Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, a sponsor of the $1.6 billion counternarcotics 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 win congressional support for the aid. “He was very personable. Both Democrats and Republicans loved him.”

Chicola, who immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager from Cuba and ran State Department policy on Colombia during 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 meetings. But he called Bernie Moreno’s immigrant origin tale a “gross exaggeration.”

Arriving in the United States

Stockamore said life was not easy when the Morenos first arrived in the U.S. She recalled the children going to the local flea market to sell trinkets to make extra money for the family and having to pay her own way through community college.

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

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

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

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

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-Coca bottler. He also is managing director of Allen & Co., a New York-based investment bank that every summer hosts a dealmaking retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the billionaire set and that 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 since 2021 to Bernie Moreno’s two Senate runs, campaign finance records show. About half of that was returned after Moreno dropped out of the 2021 race.

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

Among the biggest investors in the highway upgrades he promoted was Brazil’s Odebrecht, which in 2016 pleaded guilty in the U.S. to charges of paying $788 million in bribes to officials across Latin America, including Colombia.

Although Andrade was never charged for taking bribes himself, he was accused of acting improperly in the awarding of an extension to a concession contract controlled 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 proceeding, which is now being appealed. He also faces criminal charges.

Andrade maintains his innocence and has helped U.S. authorities untangle Odebrecht’s web of corruption in Colombia. Among his advocates 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 partner in Colombia, of retaliation after, as director of the infrastructure agency, he moved to cancel Odebrecht’s contract without any compensation for some $300 million in cost overrun claims once the scandal broke.

Moreno’s daughter, Emily, is the spouse of Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a former White House and campaign aide to Trump, and a 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.