Ohio’s Republican Senate candidate has been attacked by Nikki Haley after saying it is “a little crazy” how much “suburban women” care about abortion rights.
“You know, the left has a lot of single-issue voters,” Bernie Moreno said at a town hall on Friday, according to a video obtained by Columbus TV station WCMH. “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 anybody else.’”
“It’s a little crazy, by the way,” he continued. “But—especially for women that are like past 50—I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
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Moreno is taking on Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown in one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country. The race’s outcome could swing control of Congress. And in Ohio, where voters last year enshrined abortion access in the state constitution, reproductive rights could be a deciding issue.
“Are you trying to lose the election?” former presidential candidate Nikki Haley asked in a post on X responding to Moreno’s remarks. “Asking for a friend.”
A millionaire car dealer and Colombian immigrant, Moreno, 57, is a Catholic father of four and has two granddaughters.
One of his daughters, Emily, fled her marriage to another MAGA figure, Ohio Rep. Max Miller, taking her 10-month-old daughter to a house which Moreno had secretly bought for her. The former MAGA power couple, who got married at Donald Trump’s golf course, are now locked in a bitter custody dispute over their baby daughter amid allegations of drug use. Miller and his estranged father-in-law remain on the same ticket.
In a statement to WCMH, Moreno campaign spokesperson Reagan McCarthy attempted to clean up Moreno’s comments, claiming they were about the “left-wing media,” which did not get name-checked originally by the candidate, and not about the “suburban women” who did.
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
Polling shows that the economy ranks as the issue voters care about the most across the board, with immigration ranking as a top concern as well. Still, nearly one-third of voters say they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion—a record high—with women in battleground states finding the issue increasingly key.
