Bernie Moreno, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate, may well learn the hard way that women in Ohio do not see reproductive rights as a punchline for a lame joke.
Moreno, at a recent campaign event in Lebanon, before a friendly crowd of GOP voters, said something that is reverberating across the country, drawing the ire of political figures from across the spectrum — from Nikki Haley to Rachel Maddow.
And, of course, from Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, the senator Moreno is trying to unseat.
Here’s what Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland car dealer said on a video first obtained by WCMH-TV:
“You know, the left has a lot of single-issue voters. Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion’s it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ ”
But wait, it gets better:
“It’s a little crazy, by the way, but, especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’ ”
In the video, you can see women in the Warren County audience of Moreno fans laughing.
Chances are, a majority of suburban women in Ohio — many of them over 50 years old — are not laughing.
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They are Democrats, Republicans and independents and among the very same set of Ohio voters who, last year, overwhelmingly voted for a ballot issue which enshrines the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care into the Ohio constitution.
It passed with 57% of the vote.
Moreno was not one of them; he spoke out loudly and often against the abortion rights amendment.
Reagan McCarthy, Moreno’s campaign spokesperson, said he was just trying to be funny.
“Bernie was clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the left-wing media like to pretend that the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion,” Reagan McCarthy said in a statement e-mailed to WVXU.
“Tongue-in-cheek” quickly turned into something more akin to “foot-in-mouth.”
Monday night, Maddow broke into regular programming when she received word of the video. She played it on the air; and seemed incredulous at what she heard.
“Luckily, in Ohio, women over 50 still have the right to vote, even though (Moreno) thinks they don't have a right to an opinion,” Maddow said, rolling her eyes. “Good luck, sir.”
Maddow came at him from the left. Haley, the former South Carolina governor who unsuccessfully challenged Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, came at Moreno from the right flank.
Haley put this post on X, the former Twitter, addressed to Moreno:
“Are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend.”
Are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend. #Tonedeaf #DonLemonVibes
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) September 24, 2024
“Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for…
Where does Moreno stand on abortion?
He described himself as “100% pro-life without exceptions” during his 2021 U.S. Senate campaign. This year, he said he supported a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks into a pregnancy, as well as giving states the option to enact tougher restrictions.
Brown favors allowing abortion without limits before fetal viability (about 24 weeks into a pregnancy). After fetal viability, the bill he co-sponsored would ban abortions except when an abortion provider believes that the mother’s life or health are at risk.
McCarthy had more to say on Moreno’s behalf:
“Bernie’s view is that women voters care just as much about the economy, rising prices, crime and our open southern border as male voters do, and it’s disgusting that Democrats and their friends in the left-wing media constantly treat all women as if they’re automatically single-issue voters on abortion who don’t have other concerns that they vote on,” McCarthy added.
Of course they do. But reproductive rights clearly rank right up there near the top. Last year’s Ohio vote on Issue 1 settled that.
To say that women over 50 have nothing at stake when it comes to reproductive rights and abortion access can be easily refuted.
Women well beyond the age of 50 — the age when Moreno believes women lose interest in the issue of abortion — have good reasons to care about reproductive rights.
First of all, many of them have daughters and grand-daughters living in a post-Roe v. Wade world.
For many of them, they themselves needed reproductive health care in their young years. They know first-hand what many women in the U.S. face today.
And, finally, and most importantly, they care about others.
That’s a lesson about Ohio women that Bernie Moreno could learn himself.
